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he  Modern 


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IClJftTr 


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PU5LI5HERS,  CTHCAGO. 


presented  to  the 
UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
SAN  DIEGO 

by 

JUDGE  J.M.   CARTER 


THE  MODERN   BANKER 


A  STORY   OF 


BY  JAMES  B.  GOODE 

Author  of  "The  Belle  of  Wyandotte,"    "  The  Story  of  a  Life," 

"The   Union  of  Love,"    "A  Trip  Through  Arkansaw," 

"A    Farmer's  Daughter,"     "May  Blossom," 

"His  Heart's  Best  Love,"  "Madge," 

"Ola,"    Etc.,   Etc. 


CHICAGO 

CHARLES  H.  KERR  &  COMPANY 
56  FIFTH  AVENUE 
1896 


Copyright  1896,  by 
JAMES  B.  GOODE 


Library  of  Progress,  No.  18.        Quarterly,  $1.00  a  Year.        February,  1896. 
Entered  at  the  Postoffice,  Chicago,  as  second-class  mail  matter. 


THE  MODERN  BANKER. 

CHAPTER  I. 

"  YES,  wife,  our  boys  want  to  marry  the  Cald- 
well  girls,  and  have  asked  my  permission  to  do 
so.  I  do  not  like  the  idea  of  brothers  marrying 
sisters;  but  I  know  of  no  reason  why  they 
should  not  do  so, if  they  love  each  other.  Neigh- 
bor Caldwell  is  one  of  our  oldest  and  best  friends, 
and  his  family  are  unequaled  in  their  education, 
manners  and  social  standing  in  the  community. 
The  girls  are  beautiful,  well-raised  and  healthy. 
I  cannot  see  any  reason  why  we  should  object. 
What  do  you  think  of  it?" 

"I  have  loved  those  girls  all  of  their  lives, 
and  unless  there  is  some  law,  or  some  rule  in 
the  Bible,  which  forbids  brothers  marrying  to 
sisters,  I  cannot  see  any  reason  why  we  should 
object." 

"There  is  no  law  or  rule,  either  human  or 
divine,  which  forbids  brothers  marrying  to  sis- 
ters. I  have  been  very  careful  to  obtain  all  the 
facts  in  the  case.  In  fact,  I  find  that  it  has 

been  allowed  in  all  ages." 

5 


6  THE  MODERN  BANKER 

"I  think  Mamie  Caldwell  is  one  of  the  sweet- 
est girls  alive.  She  seems  to  have  every  quali- 
fication I  could  ask  for  in  a  wife  for  Arthur. 
And  they  will  make  a  loving  couple,  I  am  sure. 
But  I  am  not  so  sure  about  Henry  and  Cora. 
They  are  both  high-tempered  and  domineering. 
They  Iboth  have  black  hair  and  eyes  and  both  are 
very  ambitious.  But  I  hope  they  will  do  well," 
said  his  wife. 

When  Farmer  Hunt,  as  he  called  himself,  am 
anything,  it  was  always  well  done,  so  that, when 
his  boys  were  married  to  the  Caldwell  sisters, 
the  infair  was  one  of  the  largest  ever  seen  in  the 
county.  The  old  farmhouse  was  filled  with 
neighbors  and  their  children,  and  mirth  and 
merriment  was  given  full  sway.  The  dining- 
table  was  extended  the  full  length  of  the  room, 
and  several  times  filled  with  the  merry-makers. 
After  supper,  the  dance  began  with  a  hearty 
good-will,  and  the  good  old-fashioned  Missouri 
quadrilles,  reels  and  galops  were  danced  until  a 
late  hour.  Waltzing  had  been  frowned  upon  by 
the  old-fashioned  mothers  of  the  neighborhood, 
but  when  it  was  announced  that  Henry  wanted 
to  waltz  with  his  new  wife,  no  objections  were 
made  and  the  room  was  cleared  for  the  perform- 
ance. Neither  had  ever  waltzed  much,  although 
Henry  had  once  taken  dancing  lessons,  while 


THE    MODn-KN    BANKER  7 

at  college;  and  Cora  had  managed  to  take  a 
few  lessons  while  at  school.  However,  the  per- 
formance was  watched  by  the  assembly  with  the 
greatest  interest,  and,  when  it  was  over,  the 
parents  of  the  children  discussed  it  among  them- 
selves. Henry  and  Cora  took  their  seats  with 
a  self-satisfied  air,and  then  turned  to  Arthur  and 
Mamie,  while  Henry  said,  with  a  covert  sneer, 
for  he  knew  that  neither  of  them  waltzed, 
"Come,  Arthur,  it  is  now  your  turn  to  waltz 
with  your  wife." 

"Please  excuse  us,  Brother  Henry,  for  we 
cannot  waltz,"  answered  Arthur. 

"What  a  shame,"  exclaimed  Henry,  in  de- 
rision, "that  you  would  not  learn,  as  I  tried  to 
get  you  to  do!  And,  if  I  remember  correctly, 
you  did  waltz  a  few  times,  with  those  Howard 
girls,  at  school.  Come  now,  let  us  see  how 
you  and  your  wife  can  waltz." 

"No,  I  know  that  we  cannot  waltz,  and  I  do 
not  care  to  make  a  vulgar  exhibition  of  our 
awkwardness,"  answered  Arthur. 

"Perhaps  you  deem  our  waltzing  a  'public 
exhibition  of  awkwardness',"  said  Henry,  in  a 
cold, sneering  tone,  while  a  look  of  intense  anger 
came  into  his  steely  eyes. 

"No,  brother,  I  mean  nothing  of  the  kind.  I 
simply  think  that  my  wife  and  I  cannot  waltz 


8  THE   MODERN    BANKER 

well,  and  that  it  is  better  that  we  should  not  at- 
tempt to  do  so;  especially,since  I  know  that  the 
general  opinion  of  all  of  our  friends  here  is 
against  this  mode  of  dancing." 

The  signs  of  general  approval  which  followed 
this  speech  made  it  impossible  for  Henry  to 
control  his  temper,and  he  rose  and  said :  "Come, 
wife,  we  will  retire  to  our  room  and  let  this 
saintly  crowd  of  old  fogies  enjoy  their  innocent 
amusements  and  gossip  our  characters  away 
from  us.  They  are  my  father's  guests,  hence 
you  must  allow  me  to  excuse  their  ignorance  and 
vulgar  ways.  They  have  never  been  anywhere, 
nor  have  they  seen  anything  of  the  world.  They 
do  not  know  that  waltzing  is  one  of  the  greatest 
accomplishments  in  good  society,  and  that  none 
but  fanatics  and  prudes  object  to  it  among  the 
upper  classes.  You  may  rest  assured,  my  dear 
Cora,  that  I  shall  not  settle  among  such  a  set. 
I  will  move  to  the  city,  where  we  can  associate 
with  people  who  are  more  congenial  to  our  tastes. 
Allow  us  to  bid  you  good-night."  Then,  before 
any  one  could  say  a  word,  Henry  took  his  wife 
by  the  arm  and  marched  upstairs  to  their  room. 
But  when  they  reached  the  secrecy  of  their 
chamber,  Cora  clung  to  his  arm  and  burst  into 
tears,  as  she  said,  "Oh,  Henry,  I  am  so  sorry 
that  you  have  so  grievously  insulted  all  of  our 


THK    MODERN    BANKER  9 

friends!    I  feel  that  they  will  never  forgive  us." 

"Do  not  be  a  fool,  Cora!  Don't  you  see  that 
they  have  wantonly  insulted  us,  and  that  it  was 
my  duty  to  resent  it,  if  I  want  them  to  respect 
us?" 

"I  am  so  sorry  we  danced  that  nasty  waltz. 
I  did  not  want  to  do  it,  but  you  insisted,  and 
now  all  of  my  friends  will  desert  me  because  of 
it  all." 

"I  am  not  sorry  in  the  least.  I  am  really 
glad  it  has  all  happened  as  it  has.  I  had  made 
up  my  mind  to  cut  the  whole  lot  of  them  and 
move  away;  and  this  will  give  us  a  good  excuse 
for  doing  so,  at  once.  We  will  start  on  our 
wedding  tour  to-morrow  morning  and  I  will  be- 
gin seeking  a  position  in  the  city." 

The  young  wife  was  too  much  pained  to  argue 
the  matter,  so  they  went  to  bed  in  silence.  Her 
heart  was  aching  and  her  tears  were  falling 
silently,  as  she  placed  her  head  on  her  pillow; 
where,  long  after  the  surly  husband  had  gone  to 
sleep,she  lay  and  grieved  over  the  destruction  of 
her  friendship  for  all  of  those  downstairs,  whose 
love  she  had  enjoyed  from  childhood.  Poor 
woman!  Her  idol  had  been  rudely  shattered, 
before  she  had  been  married  two  days.  And 
as  the  hours  of  night  slowly  passed  away,  all  of 
the  best  part  of  her  life  became  as  a  dream.  She 


10  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

knew  that,  from  henceforth,  she  would  be  a 
changed  being.  It  seemed  to  her  that  such  a 
gratuitous  insult  could  only  emanate  from  one 
who  was  naturally  cold-hearted,  and  she  felt 
that  she  never  could  enjoy  a  real  affection  for 
her  husband.  Her  womanly  intuition  opened 
up  the  doors  of  a  cold  life  for  her,  and  she  wept 
the  night  away,  contemplating  its  horrors. 

When  Henry  and  his  wife  left  the  room,  Arthur 
arose  and  expressed  his  sorrow  at  the  untoward 
event  which  had  transpired,  and  tried  to  excuse 
his  brother's  insulting  language  to  his  friends, 
as  best  he  could.  But  all  felt  that  it  would  be 
best  to  go  home,  and  the  house  was  soon  de- 
serted, except  by  its  inmates.  Henry's  mother 
was  heartbroken.  His  father,  who  was  an  old- 
fashioned  Christian,  swore  that  Henry  was  no 
longer  a  son  of  his,  and  the  neighbors  were  al- 
most universal  in  their  feelings  of  resentment 
against  him. 

When  Arthur  and  Mamie  reached  their  room, 
she  threw  her  arms  around  his  neck  and  kissed 
him  tenderly,  as  she  said:  "Arthur,  dear,  you 
cannot  think  how  much  I  was  relieved  when 
you  so  nobly  refused  to  make  me  try  to  waltz. 
It  would  have  been  in  such  bad  taste  to  have 
done  so,  in  the  presence  of  all  four  of  our  par- 
ents and  all  of  the  neighbors,  when  we  knew 


11 


they  were  so  much  opposed  to  waltzing.  It 
would  have  been  such  a  poor  return  for  your 
father's  kindness,  for  you  know  that  he  was 
hard  to  persuade  to  let  us  dance  at  all.  But  I 
am  sorry  that  Henry  became  so  much  offended." 

"Yes,  my  love,  it  is  all  very  sad;  but  let  us 
not  talk  of  it.  I  am  too  happy  to  allow  Henry's 
hot  temper  to  make  me  unhappy  long.  You 
know  I  am  used  to  his  ways  and  do  not  worry 
over  them." 

"Oh,  I  am  so  glad  that  you  are  not  like  him! 
I  know  that  I  would  break  my  heart,  if  you 
were.  But  I  do  not  think  Cora  will  care  so 
very  much.  I  am  almost  sure  they  will  fight 
before  long;  for  Cora  has  had  her  own  way  all 
of  her  life,  and  she  has  the  most  violent  temper 
I  ever  heard  of.  But  at  heart  she  is  as  good 
as  gold.  She  will  have  her  own  way,  but  if  you 
will  allow  her  to  do  so  without  opposition,  no 
one  can  be  more  loving  or  kinder  than  she  is." 

"Let  us  hope  they  will  get  along  all  right," 
he  answered,  and  then  they  went  to  sleep,  as 
happy  as  ever  any  couple  were,  under  similar 
circumstances. 

Henry  and  his  wife  took  their  wedding  tour, 
without  being  very  happy  over  it.  He  succeeded 
in  getting  a  position  as  clerk  in  a  new  banking 
house  which  was  just  starting  up  in  the  city, 


12  THE  MODERN  BANKER 

and  he  and  his  wife  took  furnished  rooms  and 
board  in  one  of  those  large  tenement  boarding 
houses,  where  one  never  gets  acquainted  with 
the  inmates,  which  can  be  found  in  all  large 
cities.  The  novelt}r  of  the  situation  rather 
amused  Cora  at  first,  but  ere  long  she  found 
that  life  in  a  boarding  house  is  but  a  dreary  ex- 
istence at  best.  While  Henry  was  not  abso- 
lutely unkind  to  her,  still,  he  was  so  completely 
her  master  in  everything,  that  she  often  won- 
dered what  had  become  of  her  much  vaunted 
temper  of  former  days. 

Henry  Hunt  was  a  shrewd  man.  Cold,  cal- 
culating and  not  over-burdened  with  conscience, 
he  had  determined  to  make  a  fortune,  honestly, 
if  possible;  but  to  make  a  fortune  at  all  events, 
if  it  could  be  done  without  actually  committing 
any  offense  against  the  law.  He  was  a  -very 
observant  man,  and,  from  the  first  day  of  his 
clerkship  in  the  bank,  he  had  made  the  study 
of  the  business  of  banking  the  business  of  his 
life.  In  three  months'  time  he  had  thoroughly 
mastered  all  of  the  small  details  of  the  business, 
and  was  really  the  best  posted  man  in  the  es- 
tablishment, with  the  exception  of  Mr.  Lyman 
himself,  who  was  an  old  banker,  well  versed  in 
all  of  its  tricks  and  intricate  rules,  as  well  as 
being  conversant  with  all  of  the  theories,  designs 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  13 

and  calculations  of  all  of  the  great  money-lords 
of  the  world.  Andrew  J.  Lyman  was  an  English 
Jew,  whose  ancestors  had  intermarried  into  some 
of  the  families  of  several  of  the  great  financial 
masters  in  England.  He  had  been  reared  and 
educated  with  the  sole  intention  of  being  a 
banker, and  had  spent  his  life  in  the  study  of  all 
of  the  intricacies  of  financial  lore.  He  was  now 
about  thirty  years  of  age,  and  had  come  out  to 
America  to  establish  a  small  bank,  which,  it  was 
his  intention,  should  become  the  corresponding 
bank  of  all  of  the  banks  under  the  influence  of 
his  great  relatives  back  in  England,  all  of  whom 
had  the  most  implicit  confidence  in  his  honesty 
and  ability  to  manage  their  interests  in  this 
country.  In  this  way  he  expected  to  control 
vast  sums  of  money,  which  he  would  be  able  to 
handle  to  his  own  advantage,  as  a  banker.  How- 
ever, his  own  capital  was  limited  to  about  $10,- 
ooo,and  he  felt  the  need  of  increasing  it-by  tak- 
ing in  a  partner.  It  was  necessary  that  he  should 
place  his  little  bank  on  an  unequivocal  basis,  be- 
fore he  could  afford  to  ask  his  relatives  for  their 
business.  Yet  he  was  a  very  cautious  man, 
given  to  be  suspicious  of  all  men  and  things, 
unless  he  was  secured  against  the  possibility  of 
loss.  It  was  necessary  that  he  should  take  in  a 
partner,  but  he  wanted  one  peculiarly  fitted  for 


14  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

his  business.  His  partner  must  be  a  partner  only 
in  results.  He  must  be  a  servant  in  the  busi- 
ness, whose  duty  it  must  be  to  do  the  will  of  his 
superior,  without  asking  too  many  questions. 
But  it  was  necessary  that  this  partner  should  be 
really  posted  as  to  the  business  of  banking,  and 
such  men  were  hard  to  find. 

Mr.  Lyman  had  opened  his  banking  house 
under  the  firm  name  of  Andrew  J.  Lyman  & 
Co.,  as  a  private  savings  bank,  with  $10,000 
capital,  which  of  course  was  all  furnished  by 
him.  When  Henry  Hunt  applied  to  him  for 
employment,  he  made  inquiries  and  found  that 
he  was  the  son  of  a  wealthy  farmer  in  the  in- 
terior, and  that  he  had  married  the  daughter  of 
another  wealthy  farmer  in  the  same  locality. 
These  were  points  in  his  favor,  and  when,  after 
carefully  questioning  him,  he  found  that  he  was 
intelligent,  active,  versatile  and  ambitious,  he 
decided  to  employ  him.  Closer  acquaintance 
proved  to  him  the  wisdom  of  his  choice.  He  at 
once  began  educating  Henry  in  the  rules  of  the 
banking  business, and  found  him  an  apt  scholar; 
so,  at  the  end  of  three  months,  he  had  decided 
that  Henry  Hunt  was  the  man  he  wanted  for  a 
partner,  if  he  could  only  raise  enough  money. 

One  morning,  Henry  was  called  into  Mr. 
Lyman's  private  office,  when  the  following  con- 
versation was  had  between  them: 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  15 

"Henry,  what  do  you  consider  the  best  prop- 
erty that  a  man  can  invest  his  means  in?" 

"I  can  hardly  say,  sir,  but  I  would  like  to 
hear  your  ideas  on  that  point." 

"Well,  you  know  that  cash  money  is  the  only 
kind  of  property  that  all  men  desire.  Every 
living  man  is  your  customer  when  you  deal  alone 
injactual  cash.  Everybody  wants  it.  They  all 
must  have  it.  They  will  give  you  any  other 
property  they  may  have  for  it,  and  give  you  a 
margin  of  profit,  for  the  exchange.  Thus  you 
see  that  the  man  who  invests  his  means  in  actual 
cash  money  has  the  best  property. in  the  world. 
It  will  obtain  all  things.  It  is  easily  carried 
from  place  to  place.  It  has  no  strings  tied  to 
it.  It  passes  at  par  all  over  the  world.  Cash 
money  is  subject  to  no  discounts.  It  has  no  dis- 
eases. It  never  dies." 

"But,  sir,  if  a  man  places  his  means  in  cash 
money,  and  does  not  invest  it,  it  will  make  him 
nothing." 

"Correct.  But  when  a  man  has  actual  cash 
at  all  times,  it  gives  him  a  great  advantage  over 
the  man  who  has  any  other  property;  because 
the  demand  for  the  cash  is  much  greater  than 
for  any  one  thing  else.  Everybody  must  have 
cash,  at  times,  so  the  dealer  in  cash  can  always 
speculate.  The  demand  never  ceases,  it  is  un- 


1 6  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

limited.  This  demand  enables  the  dealer  in  cash 
to  name  his  own  terms  and  security.  If  he  is 
shrewd,  he  takes  every  advantage  and  precau- 
tion. A  man  is  a  fool,  if  he  loses  anything  when 
he  is  dealing  in  cash  money.  Then  the  man 
who  can  control  the  greatest  amount  of  cash,  is 
the  surest  to  make  a  fortune.  The  banking  busi- 
ness not  only  allows  a  man  to  loan  out  his  own 
money;  but  the  security  of  his  vaults  induces 
his  neighbors  to  leave  their  cash  with  him,  free 
of  charge;  and  he  can  loan  out  a  large  percent 
of  their  money  and  get  interest  on  it,  which  he 
can  apply  to  his  own  account." 

After  a  long  conversation,  on  the  lines  laid 
down  above,  Mr.  Lyman  made  Henry  Hunt  the 
offer  to  take  him  into  the  bank,  make  him  cash- 
ier at  a  liberal  salary,  and  put  him  in  a  sure 
way  to  make  a  fortune,  if  he  could  raise  $10,000 
cash  to  pay  for  a  one-half  interest  in  the  bank. 

"But  that  will  be  impossible,  sir,  for  I  have 
no  money,  and  no  possible  way  to  make  any,  or 
get  it." 

"You  have  wealthy  relatives.  Will  they  not 
aid  you?" 

"I  fear  not,  sir,"  Henry  answered,  as  he 
thought  of  the  gratuitous  insult  that  he  had 
heaped  upon  them  before  he  left  home.  "I 
understand  that  they  have  helped  my  brother  to 
buy  a  fine  farm;  but — " 


THE   MODERN    BANKER  17 

"Then  you  are  entitled  to  as  much  as  your 
brother.  Go  down  there  and  demand  your  rights. 
Send  your  wife  down  on  a  month's  visit  and 
let  her  prepare  them  for  your  arrival.  Dress 
her  out  in  silk.  Give  her  some  diamonds  and 
fine  jewelry.  I  will  let  you  have  the  money  if 
you  need  it.  Go  down  and  impress  them  with 
your  own  importance.  Prove  to  them  that  this 
is  the  chance  of  your  lifetime.  When  they  see 
these  signs  of  prosperity,  they  will  let  you  have 
the  money." 

After  following  his  instructions  to  the  letter, 
Henry  sent  his  wife  down  to  the  old  homestead 
in  grand  style.  She  was  thoroughly  posted  on 
the  matter  at  hand,  and  entered  into  all  the  plans 
with  a  will. 

Henry  had  but  little  faith  in  the  expedition, 
but  he  was  very  anxious  to  get  the  money.  He 
was  determined  to  do  all  in  his  power  to  suc- 
ceed, and  his  wife's  letters  gave  him  some  hope 
of  success,  when  he  started  a  month  after  she 
had  gone  down  there. 


CHAPTER  II. 

CORA  HUNT  was  kindly  received  by  her  old 
friends, and  enjoyed  her  visit  to  her  parents  very 
much.  That  she  was  sadly  changed,  they  all 
saw  at  a  glance.  Instead  of  being  the  careless, 
happy  girl  they  had  known,  she  was  now  a 
woman  of  fashion,  a  formal  creature,with  whom 
very  few  of  her  old  friends  could  get  in  sym- 
pathy. That  her  husband  had  made  a  success, 
was  evident.  Reports  had  often  reached  them 
to  that  effect.  But  while  they  could  not  feel 
at  ease  in  her  presence,  all  of  her  old  friends 
did  all  they  could  to  make  her  enjoy  her  visit. 
She  was  never  an  especial  favorite,  but  she  had 
always  been  well  received,  and  thus  it  seemed 
that  the  neighbors  were  ready  to  overlook  the 
insult  that  had  been  placed  on.  them  the  night  of 
her  infair,  and  receive  her  and  her  husband  with 
the  best  grace  possible. 

When  Henry  Hunt  arrived  he  met  his  wife  at 
the  residence  of  his  brother  Arthur,  where  all 
the  evidences  of  happiness  and  prosperity, which 
abounded,  caused  him  to  feel  envious  of  his 

18 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  19 

brother's  good  fortune.     However,  he  carefully 
guarded  his  expressions  on  this  point. 

Henry's  parents  received  him  with  a  studied 
courtesy  but  with  no  cordiality,  but  Cora's 
parents  seemed  to  take  considerable  pride  in 
their  "children  from  the  city." 

After  a  few  days  spent  in  visiting,  Henry 
broached  the  subject  of  the  money  to  his  father 
and  father-in-law,  while  all  three  were  together 
at  the  latter's  home.  He  explained  his  pros- 
pects in  glowing  terms,  mentioning  the  fact  that 
he  supposed  they  would  be  willing  to  aid  him, 
at  least  with  as  much  money  as  they  had  given 
to  his  brother  and  sister-in-law.  After  holding 
a  consultation,  the  two  fathers  explained  that 
they  had  only  given  Arthur  and  Mamie  $2,500 
each,  or  a  total  of  $5,000,  while  he  had  gone  in 
debt  $5,000  more  on  his  farm.  They  expressed 
a  willingness  to  do  as  much  for  him,  but  both 
declined  to  do  more,  as  they  did  not  have  the 
money  and  did  not  know  where  they  could  get 
it.  To  this  he  replied,  that, if  he  could  get  them 
to  sign  notes  for  $2,500  each,  he  felt  assured 
that  he  could  get  the  bank  to  carry  these  amounts, 
until  such  time  as  it  might  suit  them  to  pay  them. 
To  this  they  were  forced  to  reluctantly  agree, 
and  Henry  carried  $5,000  in  cash  and  $5,000 
in  good  bankable  five-year  notes,  back  to  Mr. 
Lyman. 


2O  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

"Henry  will  take  care  of  those  notes  himself, 
don't  you  think,  neighbor  Hunt?"  asked  Mr. 
Caldwell,  a  few  days  later. 

"I  hope  so,  but  I  am  free  to  say  that  I  do  not 
like  the  shape  this  matter  has  left  me  in.  I  had 
just  gotten  out  of  debt,  and  had  laid  up  a  little 
money  for  my  children.  I  was  perfectly  willing 
to  divide  the  money  between  them,  but  I  am 
sorry  I  signed  that  note." 

"So  am  I,  since  you  mention  it.  It  leaves  me 
in  bad  shape,  for  I  have  no  money,  and  I  begin 
to  feel  that  old  galling  feeling  of  debt  stealing 
over  me  again." 

"Yet  I  do  not  see  how  we  could  have  done 
otherwise." 

"Neither  do  I,  neighbor,  neither  do  I." 

But  there  was  a  shadow  of  trouble  on  their 
faces  as  they  parted. 

Henry's  face  beamed  with  satisfaction,  when 
Mr.  Lyman  accepted  the  notes  and  cash  and 
issued  to  him  $12,500  worth  of  the  stock  in  the 
bank, which  was  now  capitalized  for  $25,000,  in- 
stead of  for  $20,000,  as  Henry  expected  would 
be  the  case. 

"We  can  turn  in  the  first  $5,000  of  our  sur- 
plus to  complete  our  payments  on  stock.  I  pre- 
ferred to  make  the  capital  $25,000,"  explained 
Mr.  Lyman.  "And  now,  Henry,  we  had  bet- 


THE   MODERN   BANKER  21 

ter  decide  on  our  salaries.  What  amount  would 
you  suggest  as  suitable  remuneration  for  our 
services,you  as  cashier  and  myself  as  president  ?" 

"I  am  willing  for  you  to  decide  that  point.  I 
feel  assured  that  I  could  get  along  on  my  old 
salary  of  $100  per  month,  but  perhaps  you 
might  need — " 

"I  say  $100  per  month  1  ^As  equal  owner  in 
this  bank,  it  will  be  necessary  for  you  to  take  a 
fine  residence  in  the  best  residence  portion  of 
the  city.  No,  sir,  I  know  that  you  cannot  live 
on  less  than  $5,000  per  annum.  As  for  myself, 
I  have  no  inclination  to  try  to  live  on  less  than 
$5,000  per  annum." 

"But  can  we  afford  to  vote  ourselves  a  salary 
of  $10,000  per  annum,  while  our  capital  stock  is 
only  $20,000 — I  mean  $25,000?" 

"Well,  let  us  calculate  a  little,"  answered  Mr. 
Lyman.  "Our  last  statement  shows  average 
deposits  of  $140,000,  which, added  to  the  capital 
stock  now,  shows  $165,000.  Our  loans  and 
discounts  are  now  $125,000,  at  an  average  rate 
of  ten  per  cent,  making  the  gross  income  $12,- 
500.  The  profits  on  our  short-time  brokerage 
more  than  pays  our  expenses,  so  you  see  that 
when  we  vote  ourselves  a  salary  of  $5,000  each, 
we  have  $2,500  per  annum  left  to  declare  as  a 
dividend — just  making  ten  per  cent  dividend  on 


22  THE   MODERN   BANKER 

our  capital  stock.  You  see,  everybody  does 
not  stop  to  make  this  calculation.  They  merely 
read  in  the  papers  that  such  and  such  a  bank 
has  declared  a  dividend  of  ten  per  cent  per 
annum.  The  salaries  of  the  officers  go  into  the 
expense  account,  and  in  this  way  the  public 
never  knows  what  a  bank  is  really  making.  In 
our  case,  if  we  voted  ourselves  small  salaries, 
we  would  have  to  declare  a  dividend  of  about 
forty  per  cent  per  annum  on  our  capital  stock. 
This  would  never  do  in  the  world.  It  would 
cause  the  people  to  rise  and  vote  the  banks  out 
of  existence,  if  they  knew  what  immense  profits 
are  really  made." 

When  Henry  Hunt  arrived  at  home  that 
evening,  he  was  in  a  mood  for  reflection.  He  re- 
membered that  it  had  taken  his  father  twenty- 
five  years  to  save  up  $15,000  farming,  and  yet 
he  was  considered  one  of  the  most  successful 
farmers  in  the  county.  He  also  thought  of  all 
the  bankers  he  had  ever  known,  and  in  every 
case  he  saw  those  bankers  rapidly  rise  to  wealth 
and  position.  And  by  making  a  careful  com- 
parison among  all  of  his  acquaintances,  he  saw 
that  the  bankers  were  the  only  class  of  people 
in  America  who  were  enjoying  an  era  of  uni- 
versal prosperity.  He  recognized  the  fact  that 
prices  had  been  generally  declining  on  every 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  23 

product  produced  by  human  skill  and  labor, 
while  money  and  its  equivalent,  bonds,  mort- 
gages, debts,  etc.,  had  been  gradually  rising. 
Now,  he  thought,  there  must  be  a  cause  for  all 
this.  Nothing  comes  by  chance.  He  made  up 
his  mind  to  find  out  these  causes.  Finally  he 
arose,  saying:  "Father  is  a  fool!  He  ought 
to  quit  farming  and  go  into  the  banking  busi- 
ness. But  then,  all  the  farmers  are  fools,  on 
the  subject  of  finance." 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE  United  States  was  now  passing  through 
the  bloody  civil  war  of  1861.  Its  baneful  influ- 
ence had  been  felt  on  the  characters  in  this 
story,  just  as  they  were  by  almost  every  other 
family  in  the  country.  Arthur  Hunt,  who  was 
a  citizen  of  Missouri,  took  sides  with  the  ill- 
fated  rebels,  and  bravely  marched  at  the  head 
of  his  company, first,  and  at  the  head  of  his  regi- 
ment, later,  during  all  the  time  it  lasted.  He 
was  a  born  leader  of  men, broad-shouldered,  with 
a  fine,  open  countenance,  high  forehead,  dark 
curly  hair,  and  a  demeanor  that  would  have 
gained  respectful  admiration  in  any  army;  it 
was  no  wonder  that  he  rose  rapidly.  As  colo- 
nel of  his  regiment,  he  was  loved  and  honored 
by  both  officers  and  men.  He  was  ever  ready 
for  the  call  of  duty,  braving  all  dangers  and 
shirking  nothing,  as  none  but  Nature's  noble- 
men can  do  in  such  trying  times.  Farmer  Hunt 
and  Farmer  Caldwell  went  out  in  Arthur's  com- 
pany, and  as  they  saw  the  great  honors  that  were 
being  heaped  upon  him,  they  felt  a  great  pride 
in  their  boy.  Col.  Arthur  Hunt  was  a  modest 
24 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  2$ 

man.  He  did  not  seem  to  see  those  honors,  nor 
did  he  allow  them  to  cause  him  to  feel  one  mo- 
ment of  exultation.  His  heart  beat  proudly  at 
the  thought  of  doing  his  duty  bravely,  and  he 
never  wavered  from  it.  But  his  heart  was  sorely 
troubled.  While  he  was  away  on  the  field  of 
battle,  things  were  going  very  badly  at  home. 
His  fair,  sweet  young  wife  had  done  all  that  she 
could  to  keep  the  farm  up, and  had  succeeded  in 
keeping  the  interest  on  the  mortgage  paid.  But 
now  the  mortgage  was  due  and  its  payment  had 
been  demanded  of  her. 

More  than  this,  came  the  fact  that  the  notes 
given  by  both  his  father  and  his  father-in-law, 
to  aid  his  brother  Henry  to  get  into  the  banking 
business,  were  now  due  and  payment  had  been 
demanded  by  Mr.  Lyman,  as  agent  for  the  En- 
glish holders  of  the  same.  Of  course,  all  of 
these  demands  were  worded  in  the  kindest  and 
most  polite  terms,  expressing  the  hope  that  it 
would  not  be  a  hardship  for  them  to  pay  the 
amounts  at  that  time,  but  reiterating  the  positive 
demand  for  immediate  payment. 

Colonel  Hunt  called  his  father  and  his  father- 
in-law  into  his  tent  for  a  consultation,  and  after 
due  consideration,  they  decided  that  their  only 
hope  was  to  apply  to  Henry,  at  New  York,  and 
ask  him  to  carry  the  paper  for  them.  This  was 


26  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

done,  and  in  due  time  an  answer  was  received, 
stating  that  it  was  almost  impossible  for  him  to 
obtain  money  to  loan  on  property  located  in  any 
of  the  states  now  in  rebellion,  but  after  much 
trouble  he  had  finally  obtained  the  promise  of 
the  money,  on  the  following  terms:  First,  his 
father's  note  would  be  carried  one  year,  if  he 
would  sign  the  enclosed  mortgage  on  his  entire 
farm  (well  worth  $10,000),  to  secure  the  pay- 
ment of  the  $2,500.  He  could  also  carry  his 
father-in-law's  $2, 500  note  one  year,  if  he  would 
sign  the  enclosed  mortgage  on  his  farm  (which 
was  well  worth  $10,000), to  secure  it.  In  regard 
to  his  brother's  debt,  he  found  that  it  was  utterly 
impossible  for  him  to  obtain  over  $4,000  on  his 
farm,  but  that  if  Arthur  could  manage  to  raise 
$1,000  and  pay  on  his  note,  and  would  then  sign 
the  enclosed  mortgage  for  $4,000,  secured  on 
his  farm  (which  was  worth  $10,000),  he  could 
get  it  carried  for  one  year. 

Another  consultation  was  held,  and  it  was  de- 
cided that  Colonel  Hunt  had  better  get  a  leave 
of  absence  and  go  home  and  arrange  the  matter 
the  best  he  could.  However,  the  two  old  men 
signed  the  mortgages  and  gave  them  to  him,  to 
be  used  if  he  found  it  necessary. 

This  visit  home  was  the  first  he  had  made 
during  the  two  years  the  war  had  been  in  prog- 


THE   MODERN   BANKER  27 

ress,  and  his  heart  ached  when  he  saw  the  deso- 
lation which  had  fallen  upon  the  entire  country. 
Husbands  and  fathers  were  away  in  the  war. 
Farms  were  uncultivated;  fences,  barns,  houses 
and  other  improvements  had  been  destroyed  by 
the  armies  of  both  sides,  and,  worse  still,  the 
state  was  being  overrun  by  a  set  of  guerrillas, 
under  the  facetious  title  of  "home-guards." 
These  inhuman  fiends  levied  tribute  from  the 
poor  women  and  outraged  every  feeling  in  the 
breast  of  the  honorable  soldier.  His  own  home, 
being  a  little  off  from  the  main  road, had  not  been 
visited  yet,  but  those  of  his  father  and  father- 
in-law  had  been  badly  used.  Not  a  horse  or  farm 
beast  remained.  His  mother  and  mother-in-law 
had  taken  up  their  homes  with  his  wife,  and  the 
three  ladies  were  in  the  last  stages  of  despair 
when  he  arrived. 

When  Colonel  Hunt  learned  the  real  situation, 
he  organized  a  company  of  boys  and  old  men 
and  made  a  determined  attack  on  the  guerrillas, 
whom  he  vanquished,  with  but  little  loss.  He 
then  organized  relief  parties  and  sent  them  all 
over  the  county  to  relieve  the  prevailing  distress 
of  the  people.  Through  his  influence,  crops 
were  planted  and  the  county  was  placed  on  a 
self-supporting  basis.  When  these  reforms  were 
accomplished  he  turned  his  attention  to  his 


28  THE  MODERN  BANKER 

own  affairs,  and  finally  succeeded  in  obtaining 
a  loan  of  $1,000,  which  enabled  him  to  forward 
all  of  the  mortgages  to  his  brother  in  New  York, 
who  accepted  them  and  forwarded  the  old  notes 
and  mortgage  to  him,  with  a  strict  injunction  to 
be  sure  to  be  ready  to  take  them  all  up  when 
they  fell  due,  a  year  hence;  as  he  felt  assured 
that  it  would  be  impossible  for  him  to  get  any 
more  extensions.  Henry  complained  bitterly 
of  the  hard  times,  said  it  was  almost  impossible 
for  him  to  get  this  money  this  time,  and  gave 
them  all  full  notice  that  he  would  not  undertake 
the  matter  again  at  all.  He  explained  that  if  he 
had  the  money,  himself,  he  would, take  pleasure 
in  carrying  the  paper  for  all  three  of  them,  un- 
til the  war  was  over,  etc.,  etc.  It  was  a  char- 
acteristic letter  and  showed  plainly  that  unless 
these  notes  were  paid  when  due,  Henry  would 
desert  them  all  and  the  three  farms  would  have 
to  be  sold.  Thus  it  was,  that  Colonel  Hunt 
returned  to  his  regiment  with  a  heavy  heart. 
But  he  carried  the  blessings  and  respect  of  all 
of  his  old  neighbors  and  friends  with  him.  Yet, 
however  grand  or  noble  these  felicitations  and 
honors  may  be,  they  will  not  pay  mortgages. 

It  is  necessary  that  we  should  now  take  up 
the  story  of  Henry's  life,  where  we  left  off. 
The  reader  will  remember  that  he  had  just  se- 


THE   MODERN    BANKER  29 

cured  a  half  interest  in  the  bank  of  Andrew  J. 
Lyman  &  Co.,  of  New  York,  and  that  the  part- 
ners had  just  voted  themselves  $5,000  salary 
each,  per  annum.  As  before  stated,  Henry 
was  a  shrewd  man,  and  the  reader  may  be 
assured  that  he  did  not  spend  over  $100  per 
month.  He  had  no  idea  of  taking  an  expensive 
establishment,  nor  did  he  give  himself  any  airs 
on  account  of  his  rise  in  the  world.  He  drew 
his  salary  regularly,  but  he  established  a  pawn- 
shop, down  on  the  Bowery,  where  he  employed 
one  of  those  conscienceless  chattel-mortgage 
fiends  to  extract  ten  per  cent  interest  per  month, 
off  the  unfortunate,  who  were  forced  to  pledge 
three  times  as  much  value  as  they  received,  as 
security  for  the  "loan."  This  shop  turned  out 
to  be  a  veritable  gold-mill.  To  illustrate  the 
methods  adopted:  A  gentleman  offered  a  gold 
watch,  which  had  cost  him  $100,  and  asked  for 
a  loan  of  $50  on  it.  The  watch  was  examined 
carefully,  and  its  owner  was  then  informed  that 
it  would  be  impossible  to  make  a  loan  for  over 
$25  on  such  a  watch.  The  man  was  compelled 
to  have  the  mcne}',  felt  assured  that  he  could 
easily  repay  the  loan  inside  of  the  thirty  days 
allowed  to  redeem  it  in,  and,  of  course,  was 
forced  to  accept  the  $25.  By  actual  reports, 
one-third  of  all  such  customers  as  this  never  re- 


30  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

turn  before  the  time  expires,  and  the  watch  is 
sold  for  about  $75  cash.  The  other  two-thirds 
of  such  customers  come  in  at  the  end  of  thirty 
days,  pay  $2.50  interest,  one  dollar  for  papers 
and  50  cents  for  insurance,  none  of  which  cost 
the  pawnbroker  anything,  making  a  total  of 
$29  he  pays  for  his  watch.  This  gives  the 
pawnbroker  $4  interest  on  $25  for  30  days'  time, 
giving  him  192  per  cent  interest  per  annum. 
Thus  we  see  the  reasons  why  Henry  Hunt  was 
rising  so  rapidly  in  the  world.  Now,  we  do 
not  mean  to  say  that  all  bankers  are  doing  this 
way,  but  many  of  them  are. 

Mr.  Lyman  was  well  pleased  with  his  partner. 
He  had  found  him  an  active,  shrewd,  careful 
man,  of  unusual  ability  as  a  banker.  At  the  end 
of  one  year's  time,  he  decided  that  it  would  be 
best  to  increase  the  capital  stock  of  the  bank  to 
$50,000,  and  his  satisfaction  knew  no  bounds 
when  he  found  that  Henry  came  up  with  his 
$12,500  cash  without  any  trouble.  Like  Henry, 
Mr.  Lyman  had  been  running  a  pawnshop — on 
Union  Square.  So  he,  too,  was  ready  with  his 
$12,500,  and  the  bank  capital  stood  at  $50,000. 

Once  more  we  see  the  partners  in  consulta- 
tion : 

"I  think  we  had  better  increase  our  salaries 
a  little,  hadn't  we,  Henry?"  said  Mr.  Lyman. 


THE   MODERN    BANKER  3! 

"I  suppose  it  would  be  better,  for  the  divi-> 
dends  will  be  very  high  unless  we  do,"  he  an- 
swered. 

"What  are  our  average  deposits?" 
"About  $350,000." 

"And  our  loans  and    discounts  are — ?" 
"About  $250,000,  at  ten  per  cent  per  annum." 
"And  the  profits  on  our  short-time  brokerage  ?" 
"Will  more  than  pay  all  expenses." 
"Then  we  will  vote  ourselves  $10,000  per  an- 
num each,  as  a  salary.     This  will  leave  us  $5,- 
ooo  to  declare  as  a  dividend  of  ten  per  cent  per 
annum  on  our  stock." 

To  this  Henry  readily  agreed,  and  the  confi- 
dential clerk  was  informed  that  his  own  salary 
would  be  raised  to  $150  per  month,  and  the 
meeting  of  the  stockholders  was  over.  Mr. 
Lyman  now  applied  to  his  wealthy  kinsmen  in 
England  for  their  business,  and  in  due  time  was 
apprised  that  they  had  placed  his  bank  on  their 
books  as  their  correspondent  at  New  York  City, 
and  would  send  a  deposit  of  $100,000,  to  place 
to  their  credit. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE  war  had  now  been  going  on  about  a 
year.  The  president  of  the  United  states  had 
called  for  recruits  several  times,  and  then  had 
made  a  general  levy  on  all  of  the  Union  States 
for  troops.  Mr.  Lyman  and  Henry  came  to  the 
front,  as  soon  as  this  levy  was  made,  and  patri- 
otically— sent  substitutes. 

A  few  days  after  this,  Mr.  Lyman  called 
Henry  into  their  private  office  and  said :  u  Henry, 
my  boy,  my  relatives  in  England  propose  to  do 
great  things  for  us.  But,  as  in  all  vast  matters 
of  finance,  we  must  use  the  greatest  discretion 
and  secrecy.  The  bankers  of  Europe  are  watch- 
ing the  progress  of  this  war  with  great  interest. 
President  Lincoln  has  applied  to  them  for  a 
large  loan,  and  they  are  not  ready  to  advance 
the  money  to  this  government  until  they  receive 
certain  concessions  from  Congress.  You  and  I 
have  discussed  the  poor  basis  we  have  for  real 
banking  in  this  country.  There  is  a  tendency 
toward  governmental  money.  This  must  be 
checked.  The  banks  must  obtain  the  right  to 
32 


THE   MODERN    BANKER  33 

make  and  control  all  of  the  money  we  use,  ex- 
cept gold  coin  and  subsidiary  silver.  If  the 
banks  can  do  this,  the)'  will  be  able  to  control 
the  flow  of  the  money  to  suit  their  own  interests. 
In  order  to  accomplish  this,  it  will  be  necessary 
that  Congress  shall  pass  a  law,  offering  bonds 
of  the  government  for  sale.  These  bonds  must 
be  made  the  basis  of  a  new  banking  law,  giving 
the  right  to  make  bank  notes,  as  money,  to  the 
banks.  European  bankers  expect  American 
bankers  to  stand  by  them  in  this  matter,and  it  is 
our  duty  to  do  so.  I  have  just  received  the  fol- 
lowing very  important  circular.  Read  it." 

Mr.  Lyman  then  handed  the  famous  "  Haz- 
zard  Circular"  to  Henry  Hunt,  who, after  glanc- 
ing at  the  head  and  signature,  read  aloud  as 
follows: 

"Slavery  is  likely  to  be  abolished  by  this 
war,  and  chattel  slavery  destroyed.  This,  I, 
and  my  friends,  are  in  favor  of,  for  slavery  is 
but  the  owning  of  labor,  and  carries  with  it  the 
care  of  the  laborer;  while  the  European  plan, 
led  on  by  England,  is  for  Capital  to  control 
Labor,  by  controlling  the  Wages.  This  can  be 
done  by  controlling  the  money.  The  great  debt 
that  Capitalists  will  see  to  it  is  made  out  of 
the  war,  must  be  used  as  a  means  to  control  the 
volume  of  money.  To  accomplish  this,  the 
bonds  must  be  used  as  a  banking  basis.  We 


34  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

are  now  waiting  for  the  Secretary  of  the  Treas- 
ury to  make  this  recommendation  to  Congress. 
It  -will  not  do  to  let  the  Greenback,  as  it  is 
called,  circulate,  as  money,  any  great  length  of 
time,  as  ive  CANNOT  CONTROL  THAT." 

"What  do  you  think  of  it,  Henry?" 
"  It  coincides  with  my  views  exactly.     Where 
did  you  get  it?" 

"I  received  it  in  my  confidential  mail  this 
morning, from  my  relatives  and  banker-friends  in 
England.  They  intimate  that  they  may  desire  to 
place  a  few  millions  in  these  bonds,  and  say  that 
they  will  immediately  ship  us  one  million  dol- 
lars in  gold, to  be  held  by  us,  subject  to  our  check, 
and  insist  on  our  using  this  money  to  obtain  the 
passage  of  such  laws  as  their  interests  may  de- 
mand, from  time  to  time.  You  understand  that 
this  shipment  was  merely  a  donation,  made  by 
all  of  them,  to  be  used  for  'campaign  purposes.' 
I  will  leave  for  Washington  to-morrow  morn- 
ing, to  begin  operations.  It  will  be  necessary 
to  establish  an  expensive  lobby  there,  the  de- 
tails of  which  I  propose  to  settle  on  this  trip.  I 
am  satisfied  that  it  will  be  useless  to  attempt  to 
use  any  money  trying  to  gain  a  point  with  Presi- 
dent Lincoln.  But  I  may  gain  something  by 
approaching  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury.  I 
shall  attempt  it,  at  a.11  events.  One  thing  I  feel 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  35 

sure  of;  we  must  succeed  in  getting  a  number 
of  Congressmen  on  our  side.  I  will  put  my  lobby- 
workers  at  work  securing  influence  at  once." 

"Yes,  Mr.  Lyman,  that  is  the  plan.  You  must 
be  devilish  sly  about  all  this,  so  that  if  it  ever 
gets  into  the  papers,  no  shadow  shall  ever  ap- 
pear against  us  or  our  friends." 

"To  be  sure.     You  can  trust  me  to  do  that." 

"I  know  it,  sir,  I  know  it.  I  have  no  fear 
that  you  will  ever  make  a  false  step,  in  any 
way." 

"Now  that  I  shall  have  my  hands  so  full  of 
these  important  matters,  almost  the  entire  man- 
agement of  the  bank  will  fall  on  your  shoulders, 
Henry;  but,  like  the  prophet  of  old,  'I  know  in 
whom  I  have  trusted.'  I  have  no  fears  of  you. 
With  more  than  a  million  dollars  at  your  own 
absolute  disposal  all  the  time  hereafter,  I  ex- 
pect you  to  do  grand  things  this  year.  We 
ought  to  be  able  to  declare  a  fair  dividend  and 
still  vote  ourselves  a  salary  of  $50,000  each  next 
year." 

"I  shall  do  my  best,  sir.  You  can  rest  assured 
of  that." 

"I  know  it,  my  boy,  I  know  it.  And,  in  the 
meantime,  I  ought  to  be  able  to  save  a  few 
thousands  for  our  benefit,  out  of  the  millions  I 
expect  to  spend  in  Washington ;  and  of  course 


36  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

we  divide  that  between  us.  We  are  partners  in 
everything,  Henry;  partners  in  everything." 

"Certainly.  I  shall  run  the  business  here. 
You  will  look  after  our  interests  in  Washington. 
We  divide  profits  on  everything.  That  is  un- 
derstood." 

With  a  salary  of  $20,000  per  annum,  and 
about  as  much  profit  from  his  pawn  business, 
Henry  decided  that  it  was  his  duty  to  take  an 
elegant  residence  and  force  himself  and  family 
to  the  front  among  the  leading  financiers  of 
New  York.  The  fact  that  their  bank  had  been 
chosen  by  the  money-lords  of  England,  to  dis- 
tribute the  lobby  funds,  had  already  drawn  con- 
siderable comment  to  the  owners  of  this  bank; 
so  Henry  found  that  he  was  gladly  received, 
when  he  demanded  admittance  into  the  charmed 
circle.  His  wife  had  thoroughly  educated  her- 
self in  all  of  the  ways  of  fashion.  She  was 
naturally  fastidious,  eager  for  dress  and  the 
pomp  and  vanities  of  the  world,  and  she  was  a 
great  aid  to  Henry  in  carrying  out  his  great 
plans  about  this  time.  While  Cora  did  not 
possess  the  sweet,  womanly  beauty  of  her  sister 
Mamie,  she  was  undoubtedly  one  of  the  hand- 
somest ladies  in  New  York.  But  one  thing 
marred  her  face,  and,  on  studying  it  carefully, 
a  good  observer  of  character  would  have  de- 


THE  MODERN  BANKER          37 

cided  that  her  soul  was  asleep,  that  her  affections 
had  been  crushed,  that  she  was  a  little  bit  dis- 
gusted with  the  world,  as  she  had  found  it.  But 
she  had  a  queenly  way  about  her  that  won  her 
many  compliments.  She  had  the  lively  gait  of 
the  fast  set,  and  was  fast  learning  the  most  de- 
voted ways  of  the  extra-ultra-unutterables.  Her 
diamonds  were  not  so  costly  as  those  some  of 
the  ladies  of  New  York  wore,  but  she  wore  them 
with  a  better  grace.  Her  dresses  did  not  come 
from  Worth's,  but  they  seemed  to  become  her 
better  than  those  of  that  celebrated  milliner  did 
her  friends.  Thus  it  was,  that  when  Cora  Hunt 
appeared  in  her  residence  on  Fifth  Avenue, 
there  were  few  ladies  in  New  York  who  were 
more  eagerly  sought  after  than  she  was.  With 
his  usual  good  judgment,  Henry  had  secured  a 
lease  on  a  most  desirable  house,  well  located, 
on  very  reasonable  terms;  so  the  reader  need 
feel  no  uneasiness  about  his  not  being  able  to 
keep  up  the  style  that  he  had  adopted.  With 
the  utmost  skill,  he  managed  to  keep  up  with 
the  families  of  millionaires,  at  a  cost  that  would 
have  seemed  nominal  to  any  very  wealthy  man. 
Every  cent  was  made  to  count.  Everything  was 
sacrificed  for  a  brilliant  show  of  wealth  before 
the  world;  while,  really,  a  miser's  hand  was 
closely  guarding  every  expense,  in  private. 


38  THE   MODERN    BANKER 

His  wife  had  been  so  completely  subdued  that 
she  had  almost  lost  her  own  personality.  In 
public,  they  were  the  most  attentive  couple  alive. 
In  private,  Cora  felt  herself  one  of  the  most 
miserable  women  in  the  world.  Their  home 
relations  were  cold.  Neither  of  them  seemed  to 
care  what  the  other  did, except  in  public.  Henry 
spent  most  of  his  leisure  hours  at  his  club.  Cora 
spent  hers  at  the  theater  or  at  other  places  of 
amusement,  with  a  coterie  of  friends  with  whom 
she  was  a  favorite.  It  is  true  that,  at  times, 
Henry  appeared  at  these  places,  and  escorted 
her  home  with  the  greatest  ceremony.  But 
Cora  was  proud  and  ambitious,  and  there  was 
no  danger  of  her  doing  anything  that  would 
have  compromised  her  position  in  society, in  any 
way.  Henry  knew  this  and  was  content. 

Cora  was  very  much  surprised,  therefore, 
when  Henry  insisted  on  her  going  on  a  visit  to 
her  old  home,  during  the  summer  of  the  last 
year  of  the  war.  He  gave  her  no  reason  for 
this  request,  except  that  he  was  anxious  to  hear 
all  of  the  news  and  did  not  have  time  to  make 
the  visit  himself.  This  being  the  case,  he  could 
not  see  any  reason  why  she  should  not  make 
the  visit,  see  all  of  her  old-time  friends,  and 
have  a  vacation  from  the  turmoils  of  fashionable 
life,  which,  he  assured  her,  he  thought  were  be- 


THE  MODERN  CANKER  39 

ginning  to  weary  her.  At  first  she  did  not  like 
the  idea  much.  She  felt  that  a  great  and  almost 
impassable  gulf  had  come  between  her  and  her 
old  friends.  She  felt  that  it  would  be  hard  for 
her  to  accommodate  herself  to  the  smallness  of 
the  existence  she  would  be  compelled  to  endure 
down  there  for  three  weeks.  But  at  last  a  thought 
of  her  old  parents  came  to  her.  She  remembered 
that  she  had  slighted  them  with  impunity,  dur- 
ing the  five  years  of  her  life  in  New  York. 
She  remembered  that  it  had  been  over  a  year 
since  she  had  heard  a  word  from  them.  She 
had  never  been  a  good  correspondent,  and  since 
their  letters  had  been  filled  with  news  of  the  war 
and  of  their  troubles,  she  had  failed  to  answer 
the  letters  and  they  had  ceased.  With  the  con- 
scious superiority  of  self-made  people,  she  felt 
herself  immeasurably  above  the  relatives  and 
friends  of  her  childhood  days.  She  had  no 
patience  with  them.  They  ought  to  have  made 
a  fortune  and  a  position  in  the  world,  as  her 
husband  had  done,  if  they  wanted  to  retain  her 
friendship.  They  had  not  done  this,  and  were 
therefore  unworthy  of  attention  from  her.  But 
she  obeyed  her  husband  and  made  the  visit.  Let 
future  chapters  explain  the  results. 


CHAPTER  V. 

CORA  HUNT  had  no  idea  of  the  trials  and 
troubles  which  had  beset  her  relatives  in  Mis- 
souri. She  expected  to  see  the  old  place  look 
about  the  same  as  usual.  She  thought  the  house 
would  look  a  little  older,  and  expected  to  find  the 
family  looking  somewhat  older.  She  had  an 
idea  that  she  would  hear  the  chickens  cackling 
and  the  cows  lowing,  as  of  old. 

Her  sister  Mamie  met  her  at  the  depot, and  the 
two  drove  back  alone  in  a  single  one-horse  buggy. 
The  road  led  by  both  of  the  old  homesteads, and 
the  sisters  discussed  the  situation  as  they  drove 
along.  Cora  asked  no  questions  about  the  old 
places  and  Mamie  did  not  mention  the  condition 
they  were  in  until  they  made  the  turn  to  drive 
up  the  old  avenue  of  elms,  at  her  father's  home, 
when  Cora  exclaimed:  "Where  is  the  house?" 

"It  was  burned  down  two  years  ago,  by  the 
guerrillas.  The  Yankees  had  driven  off  all  of 
the  stock  a  few  days  before,  and  mother  had 
come  over  to  stay  with  me.  One  night  we  saw 

40 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  4! 

a  great  fire  and  knew  that   the   old   house   was 
gone.     It  was  a  wonder  they  left  the  barn." 

Tears  stood  in  their  eyes  as  they  drove  about 
the  old  place  and  looked  at  all  the  desolation 
around  them.  They  were  the  first  tears  that 
Cora  had  shed  for  a  long  time, and  the  emotions 
which  filled  her  breast  were  the  noblest  she  had 
felt  for  many  months.  Her  sister  told  her  all 
of  the  story  of  their  distress,  while  they  wan- 
dered among  the  ruins  of  their  once  happy  home. 
For  the  first  time  in  her  life,  she  felt  the  empti- 
ness of  the  existence  she  had  passed  through 
during  the  last  five  years. 

They  drove  by  the  homestead  of  Farmer 
Hunt,and  while  the  old  house  was  still  standing, 
it  had  been  so  badly  defaced  that  it  looked,  if 
possible,  more  desolate  than  the  home  of  their 
parents.  Weeds  had  grown  up  around  the  yard, 
doors  and  window-shutters  were  gone  and  the 
out-houses  had  all  been  pulled  down  for  wood 
to  burn  while  the  passing  armies  had  been 
camped  there.  There  was  a  small  field  of  corn 
growing  on  each  one  of  the  old  farms,  which 
the  members  of  the  relief  committees  had  planted 
and  worked,  which  was  the  only  sign  of  life  on 
either  place.  It  was  a  sad  sight, and  it  gave  Cora 
the  horrors  to  observe  it  all. 

At  last  they  reached  the  residence  of  Colonel 


42  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

Hunt,  and  here  Cora  determined  to  brighten  up; 
so  she  said: 

"Ah,  Mamie,  I  see  that  you  are  a  better 
farmer  than  our  mothers  are.  Still,  I  see  that 
your  place  looks  like  a 'widow  woman's  place.'" 

"Yes,  we  have  been  able  to  make  a  living, 
with  the  aid  of  little  Pompey,  a  little  negro  boy 
that  was  given  to  Arthur  last  year,  by  an  old 
planter,  whose  farmhouse  was  saved  from  the 
flames  by  Arthur's  order.  And  really  I  do 
not  know  what  I  should  have  done  without  the 
little  ape.  You  will  soon  see  him,  and  you  must 
remember  that  he  considers  himself  the  head 
of  this  family,  and  make  due  obeisance  to  him. 
He  is  the  only  'man  pusson,'  as  he  terms  it,  on 
the  place.  He  is  the  greatest  worker  I  ever  saw, 
and  has  worked  sixty  acres  of  corn  this  year, 
with  what  little  aid  mother  and  myself  could 
give  him.  Mother  Hunt  is  in  very  delicate 
health,  and  could  not  work  in  the  field  at  all." 

"Do  you  mean  to  say  that  you  have  actually 
worked  in  the  field,  yourself,  and  allowed  our 
mothers  to  do  so?" 

"Why,  certainly.     Look  at  my  hands." 

"Why  did  you  not  apply  to  me?  Didn't  you 
know  that  I  would  have  aided  you?" 

"I  preferred  to  work,  rather  than  beg." 

"What  became  of  your  husband's  pay  for 
soldiering?" 


THE  MODERN  BANKER  43 

"I  had  to  use  that  to  pay  the  interest  on  the 
three  mortgages,  and  to  pay  back  the  $1,000 
which  Arthur  borrowed,  in  order  to  pay  the  old 
mortgage  down  to  $4,000,  so  that  Henry  would 
take  it  up  and  extend  it." 

"Does  Henry  own  those  mortgages  now?" 

"Yes,  his  bank  does.  I  sent  him  the  last  in- 
terest last  month,  and  really  I  thought  for  awhile 
that  he  was  going  to  sell  all  of  the  farms,  for  he 
at  first  refused  to  extend  the  notes  another  year. 
But  at  last,  when  all  of  the  neighbors  joined  in 
a  petition  to  him,  he  agreed  to  extend  them  one 
year  longer,  if  I  would  pay  up  the  interest  in 
advance.  I  was  compelled  to  do  this,  and  had 
to  use  the  money  that  I  had  intended  to  buy  our 
winter's  clothes  with,  in  order  to  do  it.  But  I 
suppose  that  we  can  get  along  some  way." 

At  this  point,  they  drove  up  to  the  front  gate, 
just  as  Pompey  sprang  forward  to  hold  the 
horse,  saying: 

"Be  so  obnoxyus  as  to  git  out,  ladies.  I'se 
sorry  my  master  ain't  arriv  yit,  er  he  would  er 
be  glad  to  er  extol  to  yer  er  more  illiberate  wel- 
come." 

"But  I  am  here  to  welcome  my  own  sister, 
Pompey.  Let  me  introduce  you  to  my  sister, 
Mrs.  Cora  Hunt,  Pompey." 

"Shore,  now,  Miss  Mamie,  you  don't  'spect 


44  THE   MODERN   BANKER 

me  to  belebe  dat  dis  here  lady  am  yerown  sister. 
Youse  foolin'  me." 

"Why,  certainly  she  is  my  sister.   Why  not?" 

"Because  she  don't  look  er  little  bit  like  yer. 

You  see,  Miss  Cora  is  all  decked   out    like   my 

young  missus,  down  Souf,  only  she  didn't  paint 

and  powder  like  dat." 

Both  ladies  laughed  at  Pompey's  gibes,  and 
then  made  their  way  into  the  house, where  Cora 
was  welcomed  heartily  by  her  mother-in-jaw, 
but  with  some  constraint  by  her  own  mother, 
whose  heart  rebelled  at  the  sight  of  so  much 
"finery,"  as  she  termed  it,  while  she  was  in 
such  dire  distress.  She  made  a  mental  compari- 
son of  her  daughters, and  was  forced  to  the  con- 
clusion that  the  loving,  free-hearted,  anxious-to- 
aid-her-parents  Mamie,  even  in  her  distress  and 
poverty,  was  much  more  beautiful  and  noble 
than  her  painted  sister  of  fashion.  She  remem- 
bered that  it  was  signing  a  note  to  aid  Henry  to 
get  into  the  bank  that  had  caused  all  of  her  dis- 
tress. She  felt  that  it  was  the  duty  of  her 
daughter  to  try  to  alleviate  her  position,  but  was 
too  proud  to  say  so.  Henry's  mother,  on  the 
other  hand,  laid  all  the  blame  on  her  boy,  and 
made  up  her  mind  to  be  kind  to  his  wife,  but 
never  to  speak  to  Henry  again.  She  knew  that 
it  was  Henry's  duty  to  turn  over  the  mortgage 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  45 

on  his  father's  farm  at  once,  for  she  knew  that 
the  original  note  had  only  been  signed  as  a 
favor  to  Henry,  that  he  might  be  enabled  to  get 
into  the  bank.  She  had  long  since  been  forced 
to  confess  that  Henry  was  heartless,  or  he  would 
never  have  accepted  the  money  that  was  intended 
to  buy  his  own  mother's  winter  clothes,  as  in- 
terest on  that  debt  which  was  made  as  a  favor 
to  him.  And  when  he  continued  to  threaten  to 
foreclose  this  mortgage,  she  felt  that  he  could  no 
longer  be  a  son  of  hers. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

UNDER  all  of  these  circumstances,  it  was  no 
wonder  that  Cora  felt  that  her  reception  ought 
to  have  been  different,  She,  the  petted  belle  of 
a  great  city,  felt  that  she  ought  to  have  been 
made  much  of  in  her  childhood's  home.  She 
saw  at  a  glance  that  her  own  mother  appeared 
nervous,  that  she  was  not  cordial  in  her  greet- 
ings and  that  it  seemed  to  be  impossible  for  her 
to  get  in  sympathy  with  her.  Mother  Caldwell 
was  hale  and  hearty,  but  she  bore  some  marks 
of  trouble  on  her  noble  brow.  She  had  always 
been  a  woman  of  decided  character.  There  was 
never  any  doubt  about  her  position  on  any  sub- 
ject that  was  near  to  her  heart.  Mother  Hunt, 
who  was  never  very  stout,  had  been  much 
troubled  over  the  idea  of  that  mortgage, and  her 
pale,  delicate  features  bore  decided  marks  of 
grief,  while  her  eyes  wore  a  haunted  look  of 
almost  despair.  The  fact  that  her  husband  and 
one  of  her  sons  had  been  away  from  her  for 
almost  four  years,  exposed  to  all  of  the  perils 
and  hardships  of  war,  had  been  a  severe  blow 
to  her  health  and  spirits.  She  also  mourned 
46 


THE    MODERN  BANKER  47 

over  the  destruction  of  her  beloved  home  and 
the  loss  of  all  of  her  well-known  farm  animals. 
But  it  was  the  fact  that  her  boy — yes,  deny  it  as 
much  as  she  might,  she  knew  that  Henry  was 
still  her  son — had  deserted  her  in  her  old  age 
and  poverty, and  had  taken  a  mean  advantage  of 
his  own  father,and  brought  them  to  the  brink  of 
ruin  by  his  exacting  demands  for  the  payment 
of  a  note  that  was  made  for  no  other  purpose 
than  to  aid  him  in  his  struggles  to  get  a  start  in 
life, — to  think  that  she  had  nursed  a  being  who 
would  treat  her  in  this  way,  seemed  more  than 
she  could  bear.  This  thought  was  always  with 
her. 

Cora  had  come  without  her  maid.  Henry  had 
demurred  when  she  spoke  of  it,  and  she  was 
forced  to  leave  her.  She  had  been  used  to  hav- 
ing everything  done  for  her.  She  had  become 
accustomed  to  having  the  best  of  everything 
going.  Above  all,  she  loved  her  personal  com- 
fort. She  despised  personal  worry  and  trouble, 
so  it  was  very  natural  for  her  to  appropriate  the 
great  easy  chair  which  had  been  provided  for 
Mpther  Hunt.  She  cast  her  eyes  over  the 
threadbare  carpet  and  the  faded  curtains.  She 
quietly  kicked  an  old,  well-worn  shawl  out  of 
her  way,  as  she  took  her  seat  and  made  some 
commonplace  remark.  In  fact,  she  was  still  a 


48  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

little  irritated  at  Pompey's  remark  about  her 
"paint  an'  varnish,"  and  was  really  thinking 
about  some  mode  of  thrashing  the  boy  for  his 
audacity,  so  she  did  not  hear  Mother  Hunt's 
question,  asking  about  "the  news  in  town." 
However,  when  it  was  repeated  to  her,  she  gave 
a  very  lucid  and  exact  account  of  her  husband's 
rapid  rise  in  the  world, and  of  her  own  conquests 
in  society.  Her  three  listeners  gave  her  close 
attention  until  she  had  finished;  then  Pompey, 
who  had  just  slipped  into  the  room,  saw  a  ring 
on  her  finger,  which  she  had  forgotten  to  re- 
move, and  asked:  "My  goodness,  Miss -Cora, 
is  dat  ar  ring  a  real  diermund?" 

"Yes, Pompey, that  is  a  real  diamond.  Henry 
paid  $2,500  for  it  for  my  birthday  present,  this 
spring." 

"Sholely,  den, he  can't  be  so  orfully  hard  up." 

"No,  he  isn't  'hard  up'  at  all.  What  could 
have  given  you  such  an  idea?" 

"Den  all  dem  long  letters  he's  been  er  writin' 
to  Miss  Mamie  is  whoppers,  cut  clene  outen  de 
hole  cloff?" 

"What  on  earth  does  the  little  ape  mean, 
Mamie?" 

"And  dat  arr  $2,500  would  er  just  er  paid 
dat  mortgage  offer  Massa  Hunt's  farm,  too!" 

"Come  here,  Pompey,  and  get  me  some  wood 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  49 

to  get  dinner  with,"  exclaimed  Mamie,  just  at 
this  moment,  as  she  left  the  room  to  hide  her 
laughter  and  her  tears,  which  seemed  to  be  get- 
ting mixed.  Pompey  sprang  after  his  mistress 
with  great  alacrity,  but  he  left  this  parting  solil- 
oquy in  Cora's  ears,  as  he  crossed  the  room: 

"Dat  arr  man  ain't  no  human  at  all.  He  ain't 
eben  er  beast.  He  am  worser  dan  de  old  debbil 
hisself." 

When  Pompey  entered  the  kitchen,  he  saw 
the  tears  in  Mamie's  eyes,  and  said:  "Miss 
Mamie,  I  ain't  said  nussing  to  hurt  yore  feelin's, 
now,  has  I?" 

"Yes,  Pompey.  You  must  not  talk  this  way 
to  my  sister  again.  Please  remember  that." 

"  Yessum.  I  won't  say  anudder  word  to  her, 
if  you  says  not  ter.  You  knows  I  allus  minds 
you." 

"That  is  right.  Now  take  this  and  go  after 
your  wood  and  water;"  and  she  gave  him  a  bun, 
which  he  began  to  demolish  as  he  went  to  the 
wood-pile.  After  chopping  away  for  a  few 
moments, he  stopped  and  soliloquized  as  follows: 
"She  needn't  ter  think  that  she  and  herhursben- 
debbil  is  er  gwyen  to  spile  all  uv  de  happiness 
of  all  uv  my  white  fokes,  lessen  I  make  it  hot 
fur  hur  when  I  gits  de  chance." 

By  dint  of  great  patience,  the  first  meal   was 


50  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

gotten  over  without  further  trouble,  and  by  this 
time  the  position  had  become  less  strained,  and 
everybody  was  feeling  more  at  ease  again. 

But  Cora  and  Pompey  were  sworn  enemies 
ever  afterwards. 

Cora  retired  early  that  night.  She  was  tired, 
and  the  knowledge  of  her  husband's  duplicity, 
in  regard  to  those  mortgages,  had  made  her  feel 
most  desolate.  She  was  naturally  kind-hearted. 
She  had  once  loved  her  parents  very  dearly, 
and  now  that  she  really  understood  their  situa- 
tion,she  made  up  her  mind  to  use  her  best  efforts 
to  get  Henry  to  cancel  the  mortgages.  With 
this  in  mind,  she  seated  herself  and  wrote  him 
a  long  letter,  in  which  she  told  him  the  condi- 
tion of  all  three  of  the  families.  She  also  gave 
him  an  exact  description  of  the  condition  of  the 
three  properties.  She  wound  up  this  letter  with 
an  urgent  appeal  to  him  to  at  once  cancel  the 
two  mortgages  on  their  parents'  farm  and  return 
them  to  her,  that  she  might  have  the  satisfaction 
of  giving  them  to  her  parents  before  she  left  for 
New  York,  which,  she  announced,  would  be  as 
soon  as  she  could  hear  from  him  on  this  point. 

In  due  time  his  reply  reached  her.  He  said 
that  it  would  be  impossible  for  him  to  comply 
with  her  request  as  to  the  mortgages  until  he 
had  conferred  with  his  partner,  who  was  in 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  51 

Washington  ;  but  from  the  tone  of  his  letter,  she 
decided  that  Henry  would  attend  to  this  matter 
as  soon  as  possible.  She  showed  this  letter  to 
her  sister  and  to  her  mother  and  mother-in-law, 
who,  believing  that  Henry's  heart  had  been 
touched  by  his  wife's  appeal,  took  her  to  their 
hearts  and  blessed  the  day  of  her  coming  to 
them.  Cora  then  gave  them  all  of  the  spare 
money  she  had  with  her,  which  was  enough  to 
supply  their  present  needs,  and  returned  home. 
The  good  news  was  written  to  the  poor  fathers, 
who  once  more  felt  the  rising  of  hope  in  their 
breasts.  They  also  blessed  the  dear  girl,  to 
whom  they  thought  they  owed  their  deliverance. 
It  is  now  necessary  that  the  reader  should 
know  something  about  the  happenings  in  the 
part  of  the  war  in  which  our  characters  partici- 
pated. They  went  out  into  the  Army  of  Vir- 
ginia, and  had  been  in  many  of  the  hardest- 
fought  battles  there,  where  the  greatest  battles 
mankind  ever  fought  were  of  almost  daily  oc- 
currence. But  while  thousands  of  their  comrades 
had  fallen  all  around  them,  they  had  all  escaped 
unharmed.  The  Confederacy  was  now  doomed. 
All  of  its  leaders  saw  this.  It  was  now  a  matter 
of  the  best  possible  terms  of  surrender,  when 
General  Grant  earned  the  name  that  must  go 
down  the  pages  of  time,  forever  unique,  always 


52  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

revered,  and  yet  comically  accurate — the  name 
suggested  by  the  general's  well-known  initials, 
U.  S.,  which  were  then  said  to  stand  for  Un- 
conditional Surrender  Grant.  Colonel  Hunt's 
regiment  had  been  with  Stonewall  Jackson  in 
all  of  his  hardest  fights.  His  men  were  bare- 
footed, almost  naked,  poorly  fed,  and  received 
their  pay  in  Confederate  money,  which  was  now 
worthless.  Such  was  their  condition  when  they 
surrendered  at  Appomatox,  but  with  little  money 
and  no  chance  of  transportation,  these  unsung 
heroes  of  a  lost  cause  started  on  their  long  tramp 
home,  with  light  hearts  and  bright  hopes.  Like 
old  jaded  horses,  these  men  marched  slowly 
homeward,  in  groups  and  in  single  file,  scatter- 
ing far  and  wide  on  the  way.  They  had  to  de- 
pend upon  the  charity  of  the  people  along  their 
route  for  something  to  eat,  so  that  they  could 
not  go  in  large  bodies;  but  Colonel  Hunt  and 
his  father  and  father-in-law  kept  together  and 
walked  for  many  weeks  before  they  reached 
home.  At  last  they  reached  home,  one  night 
about  ten  o'clock,  and  they  were  worn  out,  in 
tatters  and  half-starved.  They  almost  forgot  all 
of  their  privations,  as  they  strained  their  loved 
ones  to  their  hearts.  Supper  was  soon  prepared 
and  "all  the  news"  was  discussed,  while  it  was 
partaken  of.  No,  not  all  the  news,  quite.  There 


THE  MODERN  BANKER  53 

was  one  sad  item  that  was  carefully  passed  over, 
until  after  the  tired  soldiers  had  one  good  night's 
sleep. 

Next  morning,  after  breakfast,  Mamie  said  to 
the  entire  family,  now  so  happily  reassembled: 

"There  is  one  piece  of  sad  intelligence  that 
we  have  kept  from  you  until  now.  But  the  time 
has  come  when  we  must  tell  you  all.  I  would 
have  written  to  you,  but  I  saw  it  would  be  too 
late  to  reach  you,  so  I  have  waited  until  I  could 
tell  you  in  person.  We  are  all  homeless." 

"Homeless!"  exclaimed  the  three  men,  rising 
to  their  feet  simultaneously.  "What  do  you 
mean?" 

"Henry  has  foreclosed  all  three  of  the  mort- 
gages." 

"Foreclosed  the  mortgages!  Impossible!" 
exclaimed  Father  Hunt. 

"Husband,  it  is  all  too  true.  Our  son  Henry 
has  foreclosed  the  mortgage  on  our  old  home, 
and  we  are  homeless  in  our  old  age,"  said 
Mother  Hunt,  as  she  fell  on  her  husband's  neck 
and  wept. 

"No  son  of  mine  has  done  this  accursed  busi- 
ness! Henceforth  and  forevermore,  let  his  name 
be  a  curse.  For  myself  and  mine,  we  shall  never 
again  speak  the  name  of  such  an  accursed  mon- 
ster!" and  the  tall,  white-haired  old  man  stag 
gered  out  of  the  door,  followed  by  his  wife. 


54  THE  MODERN  BANKER 

« 
"My  God!  and  can  this  be  true?"  exclaimed 

Father  Caldwell,  as  he,  too,  staggered  under 
this  last  blow  to  his  hopes.  "I  thought  that 
Cora  had  prevailed  upon  him  to  cancel  the 
mortgages?" 

"So  we  all  thought,"  answered  Mother  Cald- 
well, "but  the  first  thing  we  knew  the  farms 
were  all  advertised  for  sale,  just  a  month  ago 
yesterday,  when  they  were  sold  for  considerably 
less  than  the  mortgage  on  each  of  them,  and  bid 
in  by  Henry's  agent.  We  had  no  money  to  pay 
the  interest  this  year,  and  the  farms  were  adver- 
tised the  next  day  after  the  interest  fell  due. 
You  all  were  gone,  so  we  could  not  consult  you, 
and  we  went  to  a  lawyer  in  town,  who  told  us 
that  he  saw  no  way  to  help  us,  unless  we  could 
pay  the  mortgages.  We  then  went  to  the  bankers 
and  tried  to  get  them  to  let  us  have  the  money 
on  the  farms,  but  they  refused.  I  do  believe  that 
Henry  had  written  to  those  bankers  not  to  let  us 
have  the  money ;  for  they  did  not  seem  to  be 
surprised  at  what  we  told  them,  and  were  very 
curt  with  their  refusal  to  aid  us.  In  fact,  I  feel 
assured  that  I  saw  them  give  a  knowing  wink 
at  one  another,  as  soon  as  we  entered  the  bank." 

Colonel  Hunt  had  not  said  a  word  until  now, 
when  he  took  his  wife  in  his  arms,  as  he  said: 
"For  us,  my  darling,  I  care  but  little  about  this 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  55 

matter.  I  can  make  a  living  for  you  anywhere. 
But  because  of  the  outrageous  injustice  done  our 
parents  in  this  matter,  I  hereby  register,  before 
high  Heaven,  a  vow  that  I  will  spend  my  life  to 
gain  revenge.  Not  only  shall  Henry  feel  the 
power  of  my  vengeance,  but  those  in  his  accursed 
profession  of  banking  shall  answer  to  me  for 
this  high-handed  fraud  on  my  parents!" 

Here  they  were  called  to  the  door  by  some 
one  knocking,  and  when  the  door  opened,  the 
County  Sheriff,  without  ceremony,  entered  and 
proceeded  as  follows: 

"I  have  a  very  unpleasant  duty  to  perform 
this  morning,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  but  under 
an  execution  from  the  honorable  circuit  court  of 
this  county,  I  am  instructed  to  take  charge  of 
all  the  crops,  stock,  household  goods  and  other 
property  now  on  this  farm,  and  on  the  Caldwell 
farm  and  on  the  old  Hunt  farm,  all  of  which 
property  belongs  to  you  three  families;  said 
property  to  be  sold  to  satisfy  a  balance  still  due 
on  certain  notes  signed  by  you  all  and  your 
wives.  And  I  am  also  instructed  to  demand  im- 
mediate possession  of  all  three  of  those  farms, 
which  have  been  foreclosed  under  those  mort- 
gages." 

"Will  you  allow  me  to  see  your  papers,  sir?" 
asked  Colonel  Hunt,  as  he  grasped  the  full 
meaning  of  all  the  sheriff  had  said. 


56  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

"Certainly.     Here  they  are." 

After  looking  over  these  papers  carefully, 
Colonel  Hunt  handed  them  back,  saying  that 
he  would  like  to  have  time  to  consult  an  attor- 
ney. This  was  readily  granted,  but  with  the 
understanding  that  the  sheriff  was  to  retain  pos- 
session of  everything  during  the  delay.  Here 
Pompey  was  ordered  to  hitch  up  the  buggy, 
that  Colonel  Hunt  might  drive  to  town  to  see  an 
attorney. 

"I  am  very  sorry,  sir,  but  my  orders  are  very 
strict,  and  I  cannot  allow  you  to  use  anything 
belonging  to  the  place,  in  any  way.  It  is  my  in- 
tention to  lock  all  the  doors  at  once,  and  place 
deputies  at  each  place." 

uDo  you  mean  to  say  that  you  are  going  to 
lock  my  family  out  of  doors,  immediately?" 

"My  orders  are  very  strict,  sir.  I  am  afaird 
that  I  will  be  compelled  to  insist  on  absolute 
possession  of  everything,  at  once." 

"I  suppose  that  our  wearing  apparel  will  not 
be  wanted?" 

"I  cannot  allow  you  to  move  one  cent's  worth 
of  anything.  These  are  my  positive  orders." 

"From  whom  did  you  get  such  inhuman  in- 
structions?" 

"From  the  plaintiff's  attorney,  who  has  posi- 
tive written  instructions  from  New  York.  I  saw 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  57 

the  letter  written  in  Henry  Hunt's  own  hand- 
writing, and  signed  by  him." 

"Then  we  have  nothing  to  do  but  submit.  I 
will  take  my  family  to  a  neighbor's  house,  while 
I  go  to  town  to  see  what  can  be  done."  And 
then  they  all  prepared  to  leave  the  house,  which 
they  did  in  a  few  minutes,  all  talking  the  matter 
over  in  subdued  tones. 

For  the  honor  of  Missouri,  be  it  known  that 
this  sheriff  was  a  reconstruction  sheriff,  and  did 
not  belong  to  the  state,  in  any  way. 

As  our  fugitives  started  away,Pompey  begged 
Colonel  Hunt  to  allow  him  to  stay  there,  "  jist 
to  watch  er  round  a  little,  yer  see."  After  a 
moment's  reflection,  he  decided  to  allow  Pom- 
pey  to  stay  there  to  help  the  sheriff  to  look  after 
the  stock, etc., to  which  the  sheriff  readily  agreed. 

Pompey  looked  after  the  retreating  figures  as 
long  as  they  were  in  sight,  then  he  turned  to  the 
sheriff  and  said:  "Mister  Sherruff,  dem's  de 
bestest  fokes  yer  ever  seed  in  yer  life." 

"Damned  rebels,  every  one  of  them!"  the 
sheriff  answered,  more  to  himself  than  to  the 
boy. 

"Is  yer  ergin  'em?" 

"Who,  the  rebels?     Of  course  I  am." 

"Den  I  specks  I  knose  sumhum  yer  ort  tew 
know." 


58  THE  MODERN  BANKER 

"And  what  is  that,  my  boy?" 
u  Yer  won't  giv  me  erway." 
"Of  course  not.   I  will  protect  you  if  you  tell 
me." 

"I  knose  wharr  dar  arr  a  lott  uv  munney  ber- 
ried." 

"Money  that  belongs  to  these  people?" 
"Certain,  an'  I  kin  show  yer  de  berry  place." 
"Then  I  will  pay  you  well  to  point  it  out." 
"How  much  yer  gwyen  ter  giv  me?" 
"Well,  say  a  third  of  it.     How  will  that  do?" 
"An'  yer  er  a-gwyen  to  keep  de  rest  uv  it?" 
"Oh,  you  can   trust  me   to   take  care  of  the 
rest." 

"Den  it's  er  go.  You  jist  foller  me." 
The  sheriff  followed  with  alacrity,  while 
Pompey  led  him  into  the  back  yard,  near  where 
the  smoke-house  was  standing.  He  pointed  to 
the  farther  side  of  a  pile  of  old  rubbish  and  said: 
"You  ken  dig  it  up  rite  darr." 

The  sheriff  walked  up  on  top  of  the  pile  of 
rubbish  and  stooped  down  and  began  pulling 
the  brush  away  with  his  hand,  when,  almost  be- 
fore he  could  think,  he  found  himself  falling  to 
the  bottom  of  an  old  dry  well.  Pompey  had 
pushed  one  of  the  cross-beams,  which  held  the 
rubbish  up,  out  of  place,  precipitating  the  sheriff 
and  the  whole  pile  down  fully  thirty  feet  below 


MODERN    BANKER  59 

the  surface  of  the  ground.  The  soft  rubbish 
broke  the  force  of  the  fall,  but  the  sheriff  was 
badly  bruised,  when  consciousness  returned  to 
him,  in  time  to  see  Pompey's  grinning  counte- 
nance, as  he  looked  down  and  shouted:  "You 
ken  jist  dig  on  threw  to  Chinar,  ole  man.  De 
munney  what  I  tole  yer  about  is  on  de  udder 
side  uv  de  yearth.  Yer  don't  like  de  rebels,  duz 
yer?  Bye-bye!" 


CHAPTER  VII. 

WHEN  Colonel  Hunt  arrived  in  town,  he  went 
directly  to  the  office  of  Judge  Hanna,  a  famous 
old  attorney,  whose  upright  character  and  love 
of  justice  had  long  since  made  him  one  of  the 
leading  attorneys  of  the  state.  The  judge 
listened  carefully,  while  the  entire  matter  was 
laid  before  him.  Then,  after  consulting  a  num- 
ber of  law-books,he  gave  the  following  opinion: 

"In  the  case  of  your  land,  Colonel  Hunt,  I 
have  but  little  hope  of  accomplishing  much.  We 
may  be  able  to  force  them  to  release  the  personal 
property,  by  giving  bond  and  waiting  until  our 
state  laws  are  in  force  again  and  then  setting  up 
your  exemptions,  under  the  statutes.  We  can  do 
this,  at  all  events;  by  giving  the  necessary  bonds, 
we  can  gain  time  and  put  you  in  possession  of 
your  personal  property.  Your  brother's  eager- 
ness has  caused  him  to  make  one  mistake,  how- 
ever, in  regard  to  foreclosing  all  of  these  mort- 
gages, for  this  has  been  done  under  a  Missouri 
State  law, when  it  should  have  been  done  under 
the  instructions  of  the  United  States  court. 

60 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  6 I 

Therefore  we  have  good  grounds  to  set  aside 
the  foreclosure  on. 

"In  the  case  of  your  father  and  father-in-law's 
land  we  have  several  good  grounds.  In  the  first 
place,  there  was  really  no  consideration  received 
for  the  notes  given  originally  to  your  brother. 
In  the  hands  of  an  innocent  party,  they  would 
be  valid,  but  in  the  hands  of  the  man  who  has 
profited  by  this  palpable  fraud,  I  feel  assured 
that  there  is  not  a  jury  in  the  county  that  would 
force  payment  in  this  summary  manner." 

Thus  it  was  decided  to  commence  proceedings 
at  once. 

In  order  to  get  possession  of  the  property  im- 
mediately, it  was  necessary  that  Colonel  Hunt 
should  give  bonds  amounting  to  about  $20,000, 
but  he  noticed  that  when  Judge  Hannahad  com- 
pleted writing  them  out,  he  had  signed  each  one 
of  them  himself,  unasked.  The  colonel  then 
placed  his  own  name  on  each  one  of  them,  and 
taking  them  in  his  hand,  he  started  down  the 
street  to  get  more  names  on  them.  It  was  Satur- 
day, and  on  inquiring,  he  found  that  about  two 
hundred  of  his  old  army  associates  were  gathered 
at  a  hall  in  some  kind  of  a  convention.  He 
made  his  way  into  the  hall  and  was  greatly  sur- 
prised to  see  the  entire  assembly  rise  to  their 
feet  and  give  three  cheers  for  Colonel  Hunt.  He 


O2  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

was  then  borne  on  the  shoulders  of  four  lusty 
veterans  to  the  platform, where  he  made  a  speech 
which  was  cheered  to  the  echo.  When  the  con- 
vention dismissed,  he  called  two  or  three  of  his 
friends  to  one  side  and  requested  them  to  sign 
the  bonds  for  him.  One  of  them  took  the  bonds 
in  his  hand,  sprang  upon  the  platform  and  an- 
nounced that  Colonel  Hunt  wanted  to  give  bonds 
amounting  to  $20,000,  to  gain  possession  of  his 
own  and  his  father's  and  his  father-in-law's 
farms  again.  He  called  for  volunteer  signers, 
and  the  entire  assembly  insisted  on  signing  those 
bonds.  And  when  they  were  all  through,  it  was 
found  that  both  the  backs  and  the  faces  of  all. 
three  of  the  bonds  were  covered  with  signa- 
tures. 

The  bonds  were  at  once  approved,  and  a  dep- 
uty marshal  was  detailed  to  go  with  Colonel 
Hunt  to  his  home,  to  deliver  to  the  sheriff  the 
order  to  turn  over  all  of  the  property  to  its  right- 
ful owners  at  once. 

On  arrival  at  home,  Colonel  Hunt  and  the 
deputy  dismounted  and  went  into  the  house, 
which  they  found  unlocked.  They  looked  all 
around  for  the  sheriff,  but  he  was  not  to  be 
found.  Then  they  went  to  the  barn,  but  he  was 
not  there.  Returning  to  the  house,  they  called 
loudly  for  Pompey,  who  finally  answered  them, 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  63 

as  he  was  seen  coming  out  of  a  strip  of  timber 
near  by.  He  came  sidling  along  until  he  was 
near  enough  to  speak,  when  he  grinned  and 
said:  "Golly,  Massa  Arthur,  how  you  fellers 
did  skeer  me!" 

"What  were  you  afraid  of?" 

"I  sorter  thort  dat  yer  mite  be  sum  more 
sherruffs." 

"What  are  you  afraid  of  sheriffs  for?" 

"I  was  afeard  dey  mite  git  me  dis  time." 

"Get  you  for  what?" 

"I  wuz  afeard  dey  mite  hang  me." 

Colonel  Hunt  decided  that  it  was  merely  a 
childish  fear  that  caused  the  boy  to  run  away 
and  hide  himself,  so  he  changed  the  subject,and 
asked:  "Where  is  the  sheriff  that  we  left  here 
this  morning?" 

"He's  er  diggin'  arter  sum  munney  dat  I  tole 
him  erbout." 

"What  money  do  you  mean?" 

"Sum  munney  what  I  tole  him  you  all  had 
berried." 

"What  did  he  say  when  you  told  him  this?" 

"He  promised  to  give  me  er  third  uv  it,  ef  I'd 
tell." 

"And  what  was  he  going  to  do  with  the  rest 
of  it?" 

"  He  said  I  could  trust  him  to  take  care  of  the 
rest." 


64  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

"Where  is  he  now?" 

"Oh,  Fs  got  him  safe  ernuff.  He  can't  git 
erway." 

"You've  got  him?     Got  him  where?" 

"Down  in  de  hole,  er  diggin'  erway,  I  guess." 

"Down  in  what  hole?  Take  me  to  this 
hole." 

"Come  dis  way,  sir.  When  I  fed  de  horses, 
I  carried  him  a  cold  bisket  and  tole  him  not  ter 
hurt  hisself  er  diggin',  cause  de  munney  what  I 
told  him  erbout  wuz  on  de  udder  side  uv  de 
yearth,  in  Chinar." 

"What  on  earth  have  you  been  doing?" 

"When  you  all  left  dis  mornin'  I  tole  him  you 
all  wuz  de  bestest  fokes  alive.  He  said  yer  wuz 
all  damned  rebels.  Den  I  axed  him  ef  he  wuz 
ergin  yer,  and  he  said  he  wuz.  Den  I  tole  him 
erbout  de  munney,  and  put  him  ter  diggin'  fur 
it." 

By  this  time  they  had  reached  the  edge  of  the 
old  well,  and  Pompey  stuck  his  head  over  it  and 
shouted:  "Hows  yer  likin'  de  rebels  by  dis 
time,  Mister  Sherruff?" 

"Get  away  from  here,  you  little  black  devil! 
Or  go  and  get  a  rope  to  get  me  out  of  here!" 
shouted  the  sheriff,  when  he  heard  Pompey 's 
voice. 

"Here's  sum  friends  what  want  ter  see  yer. 
Shall  I  send  um  down?" 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  65 

"No,  tell  them  to  get  me  out  of  here,  you 
devil." 

"Is  yer  found  enny  munney  yit?" 

"Get  out!  Get  out!  I  intend  to  break  every 
bone  in  your  body,  as  soon  as  I  get  out  of  here." 

"Not  ez  long  ez  my  legs  can  pack  me  erway, 
you  won't." 

Colonel  Hunt  and  the  deputy  marshal  had 
been  convulsed  with  laughter,  until  this  moment; 
but  now  they  interfered,  and  set  about  getting 
the  sheriff  out,  which  they  finally  accomplished, 
after  considerable  trouble. 

"Where  is  that  little  devil?    Let  me  at  him." 

"You  don't  like  rebels,  does  yer,  Mister 
Sheriff?"  shouted  Pompey,  as  he  disappeared 
in  the  woods. 

We  must  now  go  back  a  few  years  in  order  to 
bring  up  the  history  of  our  characters  in  New 
York.  The  reader  will  remember  that  Cora 
Hunt  had  just  returned  from  her  visit  to  see  her 
parents,  declaring  that  she  would  do  all  in  her 
power  to  get  Henry  to  cancel  the  mortgages  on 
their  parents'  farm.  She  complied  with  her 
promise,  as  far  as  she  was  able,  but  she  could 
not  induce  Henry  to  cancel  these  mortgages. 
She  found  that  he  had  but  one  god,  and  that  it 
was  Gold.  But  it  was  to  her  influence  the  two 


66  THE   MODERN    BANKER 

extensions  were  due.  She  also  sent  home  many 
presents  to  her  parents  and  sister,  during  the 
trying  times  of  the  last  two  years  of  the  war. 

On  his  return,  after  spending  one  year  in 
Washington,  Mr.  Lyman  held  the  following 
conversation  with  Henry: 

"We  have  accomplished  a  great  deal  this 
year;  but  it  has  been  very  difficult,  and  very 
expensive.  We  succeeded  in  getting  the  Secre- 
tary of  the  Treasury  to  recommend  the  issuance 
of  the  bonds,  and  finally  secured  the  passage  of 
the  necessar}'  law ;  but  not  until  the  President 
had  issued  his  famous  Treasury  Notes.  These 
are  going  to  worry  us  a  great  deal.  We  cannot 
corner  them,  nor  can  we  control  them.  The 
people  are  glad  to  get  them,  are  anxious  to  keep 
them,  and  I  fear  they  will  be  hard  to  destroy. 
However,  I  succeeded  in  getting  in  the  clause, 
making  them  money  for  all  purposes  except  for 
the  payment  of  duties  on  imports  and  interest  on 
the  public  debt.  This  will  finally  have  a  tend- 
ency to  depreciate  them.  Now,  if  we  can  only 
succeed  in  getting  in  one  more  clause,  making 
them  payable  in  gold,  or  even  in  coin,  it  will 
be  a  great  point  gained." 

"Yes,"  answered  Henry,  "you  have  done 
well.  I  feel  assured  that  if  we  can  get  a  clause 
in,  making  these  Treasury  Notes  payable  in 


THE   MODERN  BANKER  j 

coin,  that  will  answer;  for  we  bankers  will  have 
but  little  trouble  to  convince  the  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury  that,  if  he  pays  them  in  silver,  gold  will 
immediately  go  to  a  premium.  And  if  he  does, 
we  can  easily  carry  gold  up  to  a  premium,  for 
we  have  an  almost  certain  corner  on  gold,  any 
time  we  want  to  use  it.  That  much  is  certain." 
"Yes,  certainly,  we  are  safe  on  that  proposi- 
tion. Now,  Henry,  I  want  to  make  my  report. 
My  account  shows  that  I  have  saved  just  $125,- 

000  for  us,    out  of   the   lobby  funds.     I   have 
carried  every  point  I  was  expected  to  carry,  and 
my  relatives  in  England  are  so  well  pleased  with 
my  work    that  they  have  written  me  to  pass  the 
rest  of  their  funds  to  my  credit,  to  pay   me  for 
my  own  time  and  trouble  in  this  matter.      Here 
is  a  check  for  your    half  of  it.   Now  let  me  hear 
what  you  have  done." 

"You  have   done  exceedingly  well,  Mr.  Ly- 
man,  exceedingly  well.     Still,  I  do  not  feel  that 

1  should  be  ashamed  of  my  year's  work,  either." 
"Well,   what  are  our  average  deposits?" 
"About  $1,350,000." 

"And  our  average  loans  and  discounts?" 
"A  little  over  one  million  dollars,  at  ten  per 
cent." 

"Then,  the  short-time  brokerage?" 
"Shows  a  net  profit  of  $23,000,  over  all  ex- 
penses." 


68  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

"Hadn't  we  better  increase  our  capital  stock 
to,  say,  $250,000?" 

"I  think  so,  decidedly." 

"And  what  about  our  salaries?" 

"Well,  let  me  see.  Profits  on  loans  and  dis- 
counts, $100,000;  on  short-time  brokerage,  $25,- 
ooo;  total,  $125,000.  Then  $25,000  will  pay 
us  ten  per  cent  dividends  on  $250,000  capi- 
tal stock,  leaving  just  $100,000  for  salaries.  I 
see  that  our  salaries  will  need  to  be  $50,000  per 
annum,  sir,  unless  we  want  to  run  our  dividends 
up  too  high  for  comfort.  Let  me  see,  $50,000 
salary  each,  per  annum,  is  as  much  as  the  presi- 
dent of  the  United  States  receives, and  the  pretty 
part  of  it  is,  that  ours  comes  to  us  entirely  clear 
of  all  expenses, while  the  president  of  the  United 
States  has  to  spend  most  of  his  salary  on  ex- 
pensive state  dinners,  and  the  like,  and  be  at  the 
beck  and  call  of  every  Tom,  Dick  and  Harry 
who  happens  to  want  a  favor,  at  the  same  time." 

"Yes,"  answered  Mr.  Lyman,  complacently, 
"this  beats  being  president  of  the  United  States, 
even  though  he  does  get  $50,000  per  annum. 
You  see,  every  year  will  increase  our  income, 
while  the  position  of  the  president  will  become 
more  irksome  every  year,  with  additional  cost, 
while  the  longer  we  run  our  bank,  the  better 
able  to  run  it  will  our  help  become.  Yes,Henry, 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  69 

this  beats  being  president  all  hollow.  Let  me 
congratulate  you,  my  boy." 

"It  is  I  who  should  congratulate  you,  and 
thank  you  for  all  of  your  goodness  to  me,  Mr. 
Lyman ;  for  it  has  been  your  guiding  hand  that 
has  enabled  me  to  be  what  I  am.  Let  me  con- 
gratulate you." 

"This  is  the  proudest  homage  that  you  could 
render  me,  Henry.  It  proves  that  I  have  made 
a  success  in  life,  in  my  chosen  calling.  It  proves 
to  me  that  my  head  was  level  when  I  chose  you 
for  a  partner.  I  hope  that  we  may  live  long  to 
enjoy  each  other's  friendship." 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

ONE  year  later,  when  Mr.  Lyman  and  Henry 
met  in  their  "annual  stockholders'  meeting," 
the  former  rubbed  his  hands  together  gleefully, as 
he  exclaimed:  "Henry,  you  must  go  down  to 
Washington  with  me  to-morrow.  I  want  to  in- 
troduce you  to  our  Queen  of  the  Lobby.  Ah! 
that  was  a  happy  thought  of  mine.  Few  men 
can  resist  a  really  smart,  pretty  woman's  influ- 
ence. Knowing  this,  I  employed  the  Countess 
Ilman,  who  has  been  engaged  in  this  lobby 
work  in  Europe,  to  come  to  my  aid.  And  the 
result  has  been  most  satisfactory,  in  every  way. 
You  would  laugh  yourself  to  death  if  you  could 
see  how  she  handles  our  Congressmen — especi- 
ally those  just  arrived  from  the  green  country 
districts.  We  are  maintaining  a  magnificent 
establishment  for  her,  where  she  receives  and  is 
received  by  all  of  the  best  families  in  Congress. 
When  one  of  our  new  Congressmen  arrives,  we 
secure  an  introduction  for  her  and  she  takes  him 
in  charge.  Of  course,  he  has  come  to  Washing- 
ton full  of  great  reforms  for  the  benefit  of  the 

people.   He  is  just  bubbling  over  with  patriotism, 

70 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  7 I 

with  the  'Give  me  liberty,  or  give  me  death' 
idea  in  it.  In  a  few  visits,  the  Countess  succeeds 
in  finding  out  how  he  stands  on  all  of  our 
schemes,  and  reports  to  us.  If  he  is  really  a 
dangerous  man  to  us,  of  course  we  are  forced 
to  buy  him  off.  And  this  is  done  in  a  hundred 
different  ways.  Some  of  these  old  country 
greenhorns  are  absolutely  unpurchasable,  but  we 
find  that  most  of  the  Congressmen  from  the 
large  cities  are  easily  handled.  They  are  in  for 
the  money.  They  have  obtained  their  offices  by 
fraud,  or  by  the  use  of  money,  and  they  expect 
to  make  money  out  of  them. 

"It  is  very  amusing  to  see  how  she  manages 
some  of  those  patriots.  Many  of  them  change 
their  views  because  she  has  laughed  at  them  as 
foolish;  some,  because  she  asks  it  as  a  personal 
favor;  others,  because  she  has  made  love  to  them 
and  influences  them  in  that  way;  quite  a  number 
change  because  she  convinces  them  that  their 
scheme  is  impracticable,  and  will  make  them  the 
laughing-stock  of  the  entire  country — ah,  that 
is  a  great  dodge! — a  few,  the  wily  old  politicians 
from  the  cities,  demand  so  much  money,  which 
we  pay  promptly,  if  the  measure  is  of  sufficient 
importance.  There  is  now  a  very  strong  rail- 
road lobby  at  Washington,  so  we  have  joined 
hands  with  them  that  we  may  absolutely  control 


72  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

all  legislation  that  we  desire  to  control.  Their 
interests  and  ours  are  practically  identical.  They 
want  cheap  labor \  we  want  dear  money ,  which 
amounts  to  the  same  in  effect.  And  for  the 
first  time  I  feel  secure.  We  have  proven  that 
we  can  defeat  any  measure  that  we  desire  to  de- 
feat. I  shall  soon  demonstrate  the  fact  that  I  can 
carry  any  measure  that  I  want  to  pass.  The 
bankers  of  the  United  States  are  at  last  becom- 
ing thoroughly  organized.  They  are  working 
together  like  beavers.  Every  bank  on  our  lists 
has  paid  every  assessment  made,  this  year.  I 
am  educating  them.  It  will  not  be  long  before 
every  banker  in  the  land  will  know  more  about 
the  real  secrets  of  banking  than  the  president  of 
the  United  States  does.  By  the  bye,  it  would 
be  a  good  idea  to  put  a  banker  into  the  White 
House  and  another  in  as  Secretary  of  the  Treas- 
ury. I  will  start  that  ball  to  rolling,  anyway. 
And  now,  to  business.  Here  is  a  check  for  your 
part  of  my  wages,  which  have  been  increased 
again  this  year." 

"Do  you  mean  to  say  that  my  part  of  your 
wages  is  $125,000?"  asked  Henry,  in  astonish- 
ment. 

"Certainly.     You  see  the  check." 
"Then  let  me  congratulate  you  on  your   suc- 
cess." 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  73 

"And  how  about  your  progress?" 

"Oh,  I  have  done  fairly  well,  myself." 

"What  have  been  our  average  deposits  this 
year?" 

"About  $2,750,000." 

"Loans  and  discounts?" 

"About  $2,500,000,  at  ten  per  cent  per  an- 
num." 

"Short-time  brokerage?" 

"About  $50,000  above  all  expenses." 

"Ah,  ha,  Henry,  I  see  you  have  beaten  me 
this  year!" 

"Yes,  but  then,  you  see,  I  had  the  entire  bank 
to  operate  on,  while  you  were  single-handed." 

"Quite  right,  in  one  sense;  but  you  must  re- 
member that  I  have  handled  a  great  deal  more 
money  than  you  have.  I  must  raise  my  assess- 
ments. It  will  never  do  to  allow  you  to  beat  me 
in  this  way.  Let  me  congratulate  you  on  your 
wonderful  success." 

"Yes,  sir,  I  consider  that  $300,000  profit,  on 
a  capital  of  only  $250,000,  is  pretty  good  results 
in  one  year's  time.  It  is  good  banking,  at  all 
events." 

"So  it  is,  my  boy,  so  it  is.  And  now,  what 
have  our  private  enterprises  done?  You  know 
that  I  turned  mine  over  to  you,  last  year." 

"They  seem  to  have  stopped  at  the  old  figures 
again." 


74  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

''What,  only  $50,000  each  again,  this  yearl" 

"That  is  all,  sir." 

"Then  we  must  turn  them  into  diamond  bro- 
kerage establishments.  I  have  a  cousin  who 
thoroughly  understands  diamond  brokerage,  so 
I  will  write  to  England  for  him  to  come  at  once. 
We  cannot  afford  to  waste  our  time  on  a  slow 
business,  like  the  pawn  business  seems  to  have 
turned  out  to  be.  We  must  have  results.  Now, 
about  the  bank  capital.  Hadn't  we  better  in- 
crease it  to  $500,000?" 

"I  think  so,  decidedly." 

"So  let  it  be.     What  about  salaries,  Henry?" 

"We  will  have  to  make  our  salaries  $150,000 
each  per  annum,  in  order  to  keep  the  dividends 
down." 

"Certainly.  That  is  right.  And  now,  Henry, 
what  about  being  president  of  the  United  States? 
Do  you  feel  like  you  want  to  change  places  with 
him?" 

"A  man  would  be  a  fool  if  he  resigned  such 
positions  as  we  now  hold,  to  be  president  of  the 
United  States.  No  sensible  man  would  give  up 
a  position  that  was  paying  him.  $150,000  per 
annum,  all  clear  profit,  with  the  chance  of 
doubling  this  salary  in  the  future,  to  take  a 
measly  president's  chair,  at  $50,000  salary  per 
annum,  and  have  to  pay  his  living  expenses  out 
of  that." 


THE   MOt)fiRN   BANKER  ^5 

"In  my  opinion,  a  man  would  be  a  fool  if  he 
did  not  make  millions  out  of  one  term  of  the 
presidency.  I  stand  ready  to  pay  the  money  to 
the  first  president  who  will  do  as  I  dictate  to  him. 
Yes,  sir,  millions!" 

"Then,  sir,  you  will  soon  find  your  man. 
Never  fear." 

"Oh,  I  know  that.  We  have  matters  just  as 
we  want  them.  The  game  is  coming  our  way. 
All  that  we  need  to  do  now,  is  to  catch  it  as  it 
comes.  There  is  only  one  more  hard  knot  to 
unravel,  and  that  is  the  question  of  those  Treas- 
ury Notes,  which  we  must  destroy.  We  must 
get  rid  of  that  greenback  money.  It  is  absolutely 
necessary  that  it  should  be  called  in  and  de- 
stroyed. The  people  cling  onto  it  with  peculiar 
pertinacity.  They  actually  prefer  it  to  gold. 
I  am  just  now  starting  in  on  a  general  crusade 
against  it,  and  here  is  the  first  gun  of  the  cam- 
paign.  Read  it." 

Mr.  Lyman  then  handed  a  circular  to  Henry, 
who  read: 

"DEAR  SIR: — It  is  advisable  to  do  all  in  your 
power  to  sustain  such  prominent  daily  and 
weekly  papers,  especially  the  agricultural  and 
religious  press,  as  will  offlose  the  issuing  of 
greenback  -pa-per  money  ^  and  that  you  also  with- 
hold patronage  of  favors  from  all  applicants  who 
are  not  willing  to  oppose  the  governmental  issue 


76  THE   MODERN   BANKER 

of  money.  Let  the  government  issue  the  coin 
and  the  banks  issue  the  paper  money,  for  then 
ive  can  better  protect  each  other.  To  repeal  the 
law  creating  National  Bank  Notes,  or  to  restore 
to  circulation  the  governmental  issue  of  money, 
-will  be  to  provide  the  -people  -with  money,  and 
will,  therefore,  seriously  affect  your  individual 
profit  AS  BANKERS  AND  LENDERS.  See  your  con- 
gressman at  once,  and  engage  him  to  support 
our  interests,  that  ive  may  control  legislation." 

"I  propose,"  said  Mr.  Lyman,  when  Henry 
had  finished  reading  the  circular,  "to  have  this 
circular  signed  by  our  American  Bankers'  Asso- 
ciation, and  then  send  it  to  every  bank  on  our 
lists." 

"But  is  it  not  very  dangerous?  If  the  public 
should  happen  to  get  hold  of  one  of  these  circu- 
lars, would  there  not  be  a  great  roar  against  the 
banks?" 

"There  certainly  would.  But  we  would  be 
able  to  deny  out  of  it.  We  could  have  every 
banker  in  the  land  deny  any  knowledge  of  such 
a  circular,  or  even  of  such  an  association.  Be- 
sides, there  is  very  little  chance  of  its  getting 
out.  It  will  be  sent  out  confidentially,  to  none 
but  our  own  tried  and  true  friends,  whose  in- 
terests will  make  them  ver}'  careful.'  Then,  it 
is  one  of  the  main  objects  of  this  circular  to  put 
a  muzzle  on  the  press.  The  managers  of  the 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  77 

great  dailies  could  not  be  persuaded  to  publish 
that  circular.  They  know  that  they  cannot  exist 
without  the  banker's  influence.  They  know  that 
it  would  be  financial  suicide  for  them  to  attempt 
to  oppose  the  banker's  influence.  I  tell  you, we 
are  getting  a  pretty  firm  hold  on  the  people  of 
this  government  already,  and  in  ten  years  more 
we  expect  to  make  it  a  perfect  sinch.  Do  you 
know  that  all  the  governments  of  Europe  belong 
to  the  bankers,  now ;  that  no  country  can  afford 
to  go  to  war  without  the  consent  of  the  money- 
kings,  who  always  insist  on  getting  some  great 
concession  before  they  will  agree  to  the  war? 
Such  is  the  fact,  and  we  are  fast  getting  this 
government  in  the  same  shape. 

"The  great  secret  of  the  bankers'  success 
seems  to  have  escaped  the  sages  and  savants  of 
all  countries.  These  so-called  patriots  have  never 
had  sense  enough  to  know  that  the  people  are 
entitled  to  the  use  of  their  own  money,  made  by 
their  own  governments,  without  interest  or 
charge  of  any  kind;  and  that  the  bankers  have 
so  manipulated  matters  that  really  all  of  the 
money  belonging  to  the  people,  except  a  small 
margin  kept  on  hand  by  the  banker  for  safety,  is 
now  drawing  interest  all  the  time;  which  inter- 
est goes  directly  into  the  bankers'  vaults,  as 
clear  profit,  while  it  ought  to  be  turned  into  the 


78  THE   MODERN   BANKER 

credit  of  each  and  every  depositor  of  the  bank, 
according  to  the  amount  he  has  on  deposit  in 
the  bank  at  the  time.  Thus,  you  see,  the  peo- 
ple are  forced  to  pay  the  banker  interest  on  their 
own  money;  for  all  men  are  borrowers,  as  well 
as  depositors,  and  all  are  caught  in  our  net." 

"You  are  right,  sir,-'  answered  Henry,  "we 
have  a  'sure  thing'  game,  with  all  the  world  as 
our  victims.  Our  only  danger  lies  in  bad  loans." 

"A  banker  is  a  fool  if  he  lets  out  one  dollar 
where  there  is  a  shadow  of  a  show  of  losing  it. 
Now,  just  for  our  own  satisfaction,  tell  me  how 
much  we  have  lost  since  you  have  been  with 
this  bank?" 

"There  have  been  no  absolute  losses,  but  we 
have  several  thousand  dollars'  worth  of  unfin- 
ished business." 

"What  does  it  consist  of?" 

"I  am  sorry  to  say  that  most  of  it  is  charged 
up  to  my  own  relatives.  I  have  done  my  best 
to  collect  those  notes,  but  have  never  been  able 
to  do  so,  without  foreclosing  the  mortgages. 
This  would  have  been  unpleasant  to  my  wife 
and  I,  because  there  would  have  been  a  great 
howl  over  it.  But  I  have  decided  to  do  it,  let 
the  result  be  what  it  may.  I  did  not  take  charge 
of  this  bank  to  allow  it  to  be  beat  out  of  its 
money,  especially  by  my  own  relatives.  I  shall 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  79 

forward  all  of  the  papers  in  these  three  cases  to 
an  attorney  this  evening,  with  strict  instructions 
to  foreclose." 

:'What  is  the  total  amount, and  what  is  it  for?" 

"Why,  you  remember  that  my  father  gave 
his  note  for  $2,500,  and  my  father-in-law  gave 
his  note  for  $2,500,  when  I  first  went  into  the 
bank.  Then,  in  order  to  get  these  notes  secured 
on  each  of  their  farms,  which  were  well  worth 
$10,000  each,  I  was  forced  to  carry  a  $4,000 
mortgage  on  my  brother's  farm,  which  was  also 
well  worth  $10,000.  This  gives  me  an  invest- 
ment of  $9,006  well  secured  on  $30,000  worth 
of  choice  Missouri  farms." 

"Have  they  paid  the  interest  promptly?" 

"Oh,  yes,  I  would  have  foreclosed  them  long 
since,  if  they  had  not  done  so.  You  can  bet  I 
looked  after  that!  I  even  made  them  pa}'  the 
last  interest  in  advance  before  I  would  make  the 
extension,  which  was  applied  for  by  a  lot  of  the 
neighbors,  who  seem  to  think  that  it  is  their 
duty  to  meddle  with  my  affairs." 

"The  two  old  men  really  received  nothing 
when  they  signed  those  notes,  did  they?" 

"N-no,  but  they  signed  them  as  part  of  my 
part  of  their  estates,  and  they  should  have  paid 
them." 

"I  believe  I  would  cancel  the   mortgages   on 


8o  THE   MODERN   BANKER 

the  two  old  homesteads,  if  I  were  you,  Henry, 
and  send  them  to  your  own  and  your  wife's 
parents,  to  celebrate  the  fact  of  our  wonderful 
success.  You  can  mark  the  amounts  up  to'profit 
and  loss.'' 

"But,  my  dear  friend,  do  you  think  I  would 
permit  you  to  lose  one  cent  through  my  rela- 
tives? If  there  is  to  be  a  loss,  then  it  is  mine. 
But  there  is  really  no  reason  why  I  should  al- 
low them  to  beat  me  out  of  a  lot  of  money,  and 
cause  me  to  break  one  of  the  strongest  rules  of 
my  life,  through  my  sympathies.  A  banker  has 
no  business  with  sympathies.  I  do  not  care  for 
the  money.  It  is  the  principle  at  stake.  I  in- 
tend to  force  them  to  pay  every  cent  of  those 
debts  at  once,  and  will  write  out  the  instructions 
this  very  evening." 

"Have  your  own  way,  my  boy,  have  your 
own  way." 

But  Mr.  Lyman  found  himself  thinking  about 
it  when  he  reached  his  own  rooms.  "It  was  a 
heartless  thing  to  do,"  he  soliloquized,  "but  I 
suppose  that  Henry  is  right  about  not  having 
any  sympathies,  as  a  banker.  Such  things  are 
well  enough  for  common  people.  Still,  I  have 
half  a  mind  to  send  a  check  to  pay  it  off,  my- 
self, but  I  suppose  I  had  better  not  do  so." 


CHAPTER    IX. 

COLONEL  HUNT  and  his  father  and  father-in- 
law  went  to  work  with  a  will.   It  was  not  long  be- 
fore they  had  all  of  their  farms  blossoming  like  a 
rose.     It  was  very  hard  work,  but  each  of  them 
felt  that  their  only  salvation  depended  on  getting 
a  big  crop  during  the  delay  in  the  trial   of  their 
cases,  and  they  worked  like  beavers.     It  is  true 
that  they  were  short   of   even    the  necessities  of 
life;   but  they    drank  "potato   coffee,"  without 
sugar,  had  meat  once  a  day, and  ate  vegetables, 
bread, milk  and  butter,and  throve  upon  it.  Their 
good  wives  took   their  places   behind   the    old- 
fashioned  looms,  and  long  ere   the   winter  days 
arrived,  had  plenty  of    clothing    for    all  of    the 
family.     It  was  too  late  to  plant  a  crop  of  corn, 
but  every  acre  of  their  land   was  sown  in  wheat 
that  fall,  and  thanks  to   a   merciful  Providence, 
they  gathered  a  bountiful  harvest  in  the  spring. 
Prices  of  wheat  were   very  high    the   next   fall, 
and  when  the  cases  were  finally  brought   up  for 
trial,  each  one  of  them  had  about  $1,000  cash  in 
hand  to  apply  on  the  debts.     This  was  duly  re- 

81 


82  THE    MODERN   BANKER 

ported  to  Henry,  who  at  once  instructed  his 
agent  to  accept  these  amounts  and  extend  the 
rest  one  year,  provided  all  the  expenses  were 
paid  by  the  defendants.  Accordingly  this  was 
done,  and  the  farms  were  once  more  planted  in 
wheat. 

Henry's  name  was  never  mentioned  among 
them.  No  communications  of  any  kind  were 
had  with  him  or  his  wife,  except  through  the 
attorneys.  They  had  all  made  up  their  minds  to 
pay  off  the  mortgages,  as  fast  as  possible,  and 
they  were  doing  so  with  a  will. 

However,hard  as  Colonel  Hunt  was  working, 
he  was  reading  and  studying  still  harder. 
He  had  managed  to  get  a  vast  lot  of  information 
in  regard  to  the  plans  and  policies  of  the  national 
banks.  He  reviewed  the  actions  of  both  of  the 
great  parties  regarding  our  banking  laws,  and 
found  that  neither  of  them  had  ever  been,  in 
practice,  opposed  to  anything  the  bankers  de- 
manded. He  saw  that  not  only  Congress,  but 
even  the  state  legislatures,  passed  all  laws  that 
were  favored  by  the  banks.  He  noted  the  fact 
that  very  few  of  the  great  papers  had  the  temerity 
to  oppose  any  measure  that  was  being  vigorously 
advocated  by  the  banks.  He  then  examined 
the  details  of  banking,  and  very  soon  ran  up  on 
a  query  that  staggered  him:  "Why  on  earth 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  83 

do  all  of  the  people  give  the  banks  the  use  of  all 
of  their  money  all  the  time,  free  of  charge,  and 
then  so  readily  agree  to  pay  the  banks  an 
exorbitant  interest,  if  they  happen  to  want  to 
borrow  a  little  money  from  the  banks?" 

This  query  was  with  him  all  the  time.  He 
could  not  get  rid  of  the  idea.  What  in  the  world 
did  the  people  mean?  Were  they  all  fools?  He 
thought  of  the  billions  of  dollars  that  were  de- 
posited in  the  banks  all  the  time.  "No  wonder 
the  bankers  are  getting  rich,"  he  exclaimed  to 
himself,  "when  the  people  give  them  the  use  of 
all  of  their  own  money  free  of  charge,  and  then 
pay  the  banks  for  every  cent  they  happen  to 
need  themselves!  Wh}T,  the  bankers  are  really 
getting  interest  on  all  of  the  money  in  the  coun- 
try, nearly,  while  most  of  it  belongs  to  the  very 
people  who  are,  at  various  times,  borrowing  it! 
In  effect,  this  amounts  to  the  people  borrowing 
from  themselves,  and  paying  the  banker  the  in- 
terest! My  God!  What  folly!  It  will  bank- 
rupt every  man  in  the  country,  except  the  bank- 
ers, who  are  bound  to  grow  immensely  rich!" 

Thus  he  reasoned,  as  he  plowed  his  wheat 
land.  In  this  way  his  mind  was  employed  as 
he  gathered  in  his  harvest.  During  his  leisure 
hours  he  read  every  book  he  could  obtain  on 
finance  and  banking.  So  it  was  that  he  learned, 


04  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

that  from  time  immemorial,  the  money-lord 
tries  to  keep  the  poor  producer  in  ignorance  of 
the  manner  in  which  he  is  being  robbed,  that 
the  robber  might  continue  his  rascalit}'.  And 
yet  it  is  such  a  simple  matter.  "Why,"  he  so- 
liloquized, "do  the  business  men  submit  to  such 
an  outrage?  Why  don't  they  combine,  start  a 
bank  of  their  own,  elect  one  of  their  number 
manager,  loan  their  own  deposits  and  get  the 
interest  themselves?  The  bankers  are  no  wiser 
than  the  business  men,  except  on  this  point. 
Any  good  sensible  man  can  run  a  bank,  after 
he  studies  it  a  little.  Why,  look  at  the  men  right 
here  among  us,  who  have  become  bankers. 
They  are  no  smarter  than  hundreds  of  their 
neighbors.  And  yet  they  go  on  and  get  rich, 
and  no  one  seems  to  ask  the  reason  of  it.  They 
get  rich,  while  the  poor  business  man  and  farmer 
gets  poorer  and  poorer,  or  else  struggles  along 
to  hold  his  own,  and  still  nobody  tries  to  inquire 
the  reason  why  it  is  so!" 

Colonel  Hunt  was  not  very  reticent  with  open 
expressions  of  these  thoughts,  and  they  soon  had 
others  thinking  a  little  on  their  own  account. 
These  expressions  soon  gave  him  the  reputation 
of  being  a  far-seeing  man.  His  neighbors  spoke 
of  him  as  a  coming  man.  They  all  looked  upon 
him  as  an  honest,  fearless  patriot. 


THE   MODERN   BANKER  85 

Mr.  Lyman  produced  a  check  for  $200,000  as 
Henry's  share  in  his  next  year's  work,  at  the 
next  stockholders'  meeting,  and  then  asked,  as 
usual: 

"What  are  our  average  deposits,  Henry?" 

"About  $4,000,000." 

"Loans  and  discounts?" 

"About  $3,650,000,  at  9  per  cent  per  annum." 

"Short-time  brokerage?" 

"About  $75,000  above  all  expenses." 

"Ah,  Henry,  I  see  we  are  about  even  this 
time.  We  have  each  added  about  $400,000  to 
our  capital  this  year." 

"But  there  is  the  diamond  brokerage,  sir." 

"So  there  is.  I  will  be  bound  that  you  will 
beat  me  again.  How  has  my  cousin  turned.out?" 

"Very  well,  I  suppose,  although  he  declares 
that  he  is  just  getting  the  business  under  head- 
way." 

"What  are  his  profits,  so  far?" 

"A  little  over  $100,000  at  each  place,  $200,- 
ooo  in  all." 

"Ah!"  exclaimed  Mr.  Lyman,  "that  makes 
a  little  over  a  million  dollars  clear  profits  this 
year.  Pretty  good,  my  dear  boy.  Allow  me 
to  congratulate  you." 

"Allow  me  to  return  the  congratulations, with 
my  best  wishes  for  your  continued  good  health 


86  THE  MODERN  BANKER 

and  happiness."  And  they  shook  hands  heartily. 

"But  I  have  two  points  for  congratulations 
yet." 

"Name  them,  my  dear  boy,  name  them,"  said 
Mr.  Lyman. 

"First,!  have  collected$i,5ooon  my  brother's 
mortgage,  and  $1,000  each  from  my  father  and 
father-in-law.  This  makes  these  investments 
absolutely  safe,  and  as  they  are  pa}*ing  me  ten 
per  cent  interest,  while  I  find  that  it  is  hard  to 
average  nine  per  cent  here,  I  have  offered  to 
extend  them  indefinitely.  ThisVelieves  me  from 
the  stain  of  my  relatives  disgracing  themselves, 
and  the  bank  from  the  stain  of  losing  any  thing." 

"Never  mind  about  telling  me  this — I  mean, 
that  it  is  all  right — you  know  best, at  all  events," 
said  Mr.  Lyman,  rising  to  leave  the  room. 

"But,  wait!"  exclaimed  Henry,  at  a  loss  to 
account  for  the  strange  conduct  of  his  partner, 
"you  have  not  heard  my  best  news  yet." 

"Well,   what  is  it?"  rather  gruffly. 

"I  have  a  son  and  heir,"  blushing  like  a  boy. 

"Glad  to  know  it,  sir,  glad  to  know  it.  But 
I  must  really  be  going  now."  He  then  retired 
to  the  corridor,  where  he  said  to  himself :  "I 
wish  he  would  never  mention  those  accursed 
mortgages  to  me  again.  It  was  a  beastly  thing 
to  do,  and  I  cannot  help  but  shudder,  while  he 
is  continually  calling  my  attention  to  them  I" 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  87 

Henry  was  puzzled.  After  studying  about 
the  matter  for  some  time,  he  said:  "I  have  it. 
He  told  me  to  cancel  those  two  mortgages  on 
the  old  homesteads  of  my  father  and  father-in- 
law,  last  year,  and  I  did  not  do  it.  This  has 
offended  him.  I  will  cancel  them  and  send  them 
to  the  old  people  this  very  evening.  Yes,  I  will 
send  Arthur  his,  too,  with  a  letter,  telling  about 
the  little  one." 

An  hour  later  he  mailed  his  letter,  with  the 
first  glow  of  real  human  feeling  that  he  had  felt 
in  years.  He  had  become  a  machine,  which  was 
incapable  of  enjoying  any  emotions  save  the 
greed  of  gain.  But  the  coming  of  his  little  son 
opened  up  his  heart  a  little.  And  he  kissed  his 
wife  when  he  reached  home.  And  she  was  very 
much  surprised,  and  wept. 

That  night,  Cora  surprised  Henry  by  asking 
him  to  let  her  "go  home"  for  a  month  or  two. 
At  first  he  would  not  listen  to  the  idea,  but  she 
insisted,  and  finally  he  gave  his  consent.  Baby 
was  now  six  weeks  old,  and  Henry  could  not 
make  this  an  excuse  to  keep  her,  so  he  sent  her 
away,  with  a  strange  feeling  at  his  heart. 

Cora  drove  up  to  her  mother's  door  in  a  hired 
vehicle,  unannounced.  She  was  alone,  so  she 
hitched  the  horse,  took  baby  in  her  arms  and 
walked  into  her  mother's  room,  which  she  found 


08  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

unoccupied.  She  heard  a  noise  in  a  back  room, 
so  she  laid  baby  on  the  bed  and  went  quietly 
into  this  room,  where  she  found  her  mother 
weaving  lustily.  Almost  before  Mother  Cald- 
well  could  utter  a  word,  Cora  had  her  arms 
around  her  neck  and  was  weeping,  as  she 
pleaded:  "Mother,  my  heart  is  broken!  Won't 
you  love  me  again?  Oh,  how  my  heart  hungers 
for  love !  I  have  been  loveless  for  ten  long  years. 
I  cannot  stand  it  any  longer.  What  care  I  for 
all  the  pomp  and  vanities  of  the  world,  if  I  can- 
not have  some  one  to  love?  Oh,  mother!  Please 
don't  look  at  me  that  way!  Scold  me!  Beat 
me,  if  you  will,  but,  oh,  love  me  again!  Take 
me  to  your  heart  again.  I  know  what  you  feel. 
I  cannot  excuse  my  conduct,  but,  oh,  let  me 
love  you  again." 

Mother  Caldwell's  face  was  a  study.  Pride, 
outraged  love,  resentment  and  bitterness  were  all 
striving  for  the  master}7.  Her  arms  had  dropped 
down  by  her  sides,  and  were  encircled  by  those 
of  Cora,  whose  streaming  eyes  and  disheveled 
hair  were  directly  in  front  of  her. 

But  unluckily  for  poor  Cora,  a  discussion  had 
been  held  over  the  receipt  of  those  canceled 
mortgages  by  all  interested  parties,  only  the 
night  before,  and  it  had  been  agreed,  unani- 
mously, that  they  should  be  returned  to  Henry, 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  89 

with  the  haughty  intelligence  that  they  would  be 
paid  in  full.  They  had  been  demanded  at  a 
time  when  payment  was  impossible,  but  now 
that  it  would  be  possible  to  pay  them  so  soon,  it 
would  not  be  possible  for  them  to  allow  of  any 
discount  being  taken  off.  They  would  be  paid 
to  the  last  cent.  During  this  consultation, 
Mother  Caldwell  had  sworn  that  no  daughter  of 
hers  would  live  with  a  man  who  had  made  his 
money  by  such  methods.  She  remembered  all 
this  as  Cora  was  pleading,  and  when  she  had 
ceased,  her  mother  rose,  pushed  her  back  from 
her  and  said:  "You  are  no  longer  my  daughter! 
Why  have  you  come  here  to  mock  me  in  this 
way  ?  You  are  a  pretty  daughter,  dressed  up  in 
your  finery,  wearing  your  diamonds,  while  your 
old  gray-haired  mother  is  running  a  loom  for  a 
living!"  With  this,  Mother  Caldwell  started  to 
go  into  her  own  room,  dragging  her  weeping 
daughter  with  her.  The  unusual  noise  had 
awakened  the  baby,  and  he  began  to  cry.  In 
one  moment  Cora  had  the  child  in  her  arms, her 
own  tears  streaming  into  his  face,  as  she  ex- 
claimed: "Mother,  can't  you  see  that  it  is  baby 
who  has  done  it?  Baby  has  changed  my  heart! 
Baby's  coming  has  shown  me  how  mean  I 
have  been  to  you!  Mother,  can't  you  forgive 
me  for  baby's  sake?" 


9O  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

"My  God!  This  is  more  than  I  can  bearl" 
she  exclaimed,  as  she  fell  back  into  her  easy 
chair. 

Cora  laid  the  child  in  her  mother's  lap,  as  she 
knelt  at  her  knees.  Baby  seemed  to  think  that 
it  was  all  right  again,  so  he  began  looking  at  his 
grandmother  with  eyes  wide  open  with  astonish- 
ment. 

"God  bless  the  child!  It  has  done  one  good 
deed  already,  if  it  has  put  you  to  thinking!" ex- 
claimed Mother  Caldwell,  as  she  pressed  the 
little  one  to  her  heart.  This  seemed  to  break 
the  ice,  and  she  poured  into  Cora's  ears  a  stream 
of  heart-longings,  heart-aches  and  unhappiness, 
for  an  hour  or  more,  while  Cora  wept  on  her 
knee.  She  wound  up  the  proceeding  by  giving 
her  daughter  a  good  kissing,  a  hearty  hugging, 
and  thanking  her  Creator  for  restoring  her  long- 
lost  daughter  to  her  arms  again.  Then  she  sud- 
denly remembered  that  it  was  getting  late  and 
that  she  had  to  get  some  supper  and  that  she 
"didn't  know  what  on  earth  she  would  cook  for 
that  baby  to  eat." 

"Why,  mother,  baby  can't  eat  anything.  He 
nurses." 

"Of  course  he  does,  bless  his  little  heart.  But 
I  don't  know  what  your  father  will  say,  and  I 
don't  know  what  everybody  will  say,  but  I  don't 


THE  MODERN   BANKER  9! 

Care.  If  you  are  going  to  treat  me  as  a  daughter 
should,  then  I  ain't  the  mother  to  keep  you  from 
doing  your  duty." 

"Now,  that's  my  darling  old  mother,  herself 
again,"  exclaimed  Cora,  as  the  kissing  scene 
began  again. 

Cora  had  on  an  old  apron  and  was  busy  help- 
ing her  mother  in  the  kitchen,  when  her  father 
came  in  from  work.  When  he  had  been  told 
all  that  had  taken  place,  he  said:  "I  knew  your 
mother  couldn't  hold  out  long,  when  she  saw 
that  baby.  By  the  bye,  where  is  the  young 
man?  I  would  like  to  see  my  first  grandson 
once,  myself." 

And  so  baby  was  exhibited  to  his  delighted 
grandfather,  and  all  four  were  happier  than  they 
had  been  for  many  a  day. 

Cora's  visit  was  uneventful  after  this.  Her 
father  and  mother  took  her  to  their  hearts  again, 
but  she  did  not  expect  to  be  very  well  received 
by  Colonel  Hunt,  or  his  family  or  friends.  They 
treated  her  kindly,  but  she  could  see  there  was 
little  real  cordiality  in  their  manner.  Mamie 
seemed  to  be  much  the  prouder  of  the  two  sisters. 
She  had  condemned  the  heartlessness  of  Henry 
so  bitterly  that  she  could  not  overcome  her  re- 
pugnance at  seeing  Henry's  wife  and  child. 
However,  Mother  and  Father  Hunt  received  her 


very  cordially.  They  knew  Henry,  and  blamed 
him  for  his  heartlessness  to  them, but  they  did  not 
have  the  heart  to  condemn  his  wife  and  innocent 
baby,  on  his  account.  Yet  there  was  one  point 
that  all  parties  drew  the  line  at.  Not  one  of  them 
all  would  accept  a  single  present  from  Cora. 
Mother  Caldwell  took  the  lead  in  this,  when 
Cora  wanted  to  get  her  some  better  furniture  and 
carpets.  "No,  Cora,"  she  had  said,  "I  cannot 
accept  anything  from  your  husband.  It  would 
seem  to  me  like  blood  money,  for  I  know  that 
he  has  cheated  some  poor  mortal  out  of  it." 

"Oh,  mother,  don't  talk  that  way,"  said  Cora. 

"I  must  do  it,  child.  Every  mortgage  that 
he  has  foreclosed  has  robbed  some  poor  family 
out  of  a  home.  He  has  not  earned  a  single 
dollar  of  all  that  vast  fortune  that  he  has  gained. 
By  some  hook  or  crook  in  the  law,  he  has 
wrenched  it  out  of  the  shriveled  hand  of  labor; 
has  gathered  it  in  away  from  some  deserving  per- 
son. See  what  wretchedness  he  tried  to  bring 
upon  his  own  parents!  Would  an  honorable 
man  have  done  that?  Would  an  honest  man  take 
such  a  mean  advantage  of  any  one, as  to  get  them 
to"  sign  a  note  for  his  own  accommodation,  and 
then  take  that  same  note  and  sell  his  friend  out 
of  house  and  home?  No,  Cora,  if  you  ever  need 
a  friend,  or  a  home,  or  anything  that  we  can  do 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  93 

for  you,  come  to  us;  but  do  not  expect  us  to 
receive  your  husband,  or  any  of  his  ill-gotten 
gains." 

And  with  this  decision  Cora  was  forced  to  be 
content,  and  after  a  month's  visit  she  returned 
to  New  York,  feeling  that  she  was  leaving  all 
that  was  worth  living  for  behind  her. 

The  wheat  crop  was  a  failure  this  year,  so  it 
was  found  that  it  would  be  impossible  for  them 
to  pay  anything  on  the  principal  of  the  mort- 
gages, but  interest  in  full  was  mailed  to  Henry 
by  the  attorney,  and  was  promptly  thrown  into 
the  fire  by  him,  no  answer  being  vouchsafed. 
When  the  mortgages  were  returned  to  him,  he 
had  treated  them  in  the  same  way, swearing  that 
he  would  never  write  them  another  line, as  he  did 
so.  He  had  burned  up  the  mortgages, but  he  could 
not  eradicate  the  words  of  his  brother's  manly 
letter  from  his  memory.  They  were  burned 
into  living  letters  of  fire  on  his  heart,  and  he 
could  not  forget  them.  He  saw  them  yet;  he 
could  read  them  now: — 

"At  the  request  of  our  parents,  I  herewith  re- 
turn to  you  the  mortgages  that  your  greed  for 
gain  has  wrenched  from  their  aged,  trembling 
hands,  with  the  assurance  that  they  will  pay 
them  just  as  soon  as  possible.  After  accepting 
the  pitiful  earnings  of  your  own  mother,  of  your 
own  mother-in-law  and  of  your  sister-in-law, 


94  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

during  all  of  the  four  years  of  our  civil  war,  as 
interest  on  those  accursed  mortgages,  while  their 
husbands  were  away  in  the  war,  you  cannot  now 
refuse  to  accept  both  principal  and  interest  from 
those  husbands, who  insist  on  paying  every  cent 
covered  in  your  unholy  demand. 

"But  this  is  not  all.  After  persuading  your 
father  and  father-in-law  to  sign  two  accommo- 
dation notes  to  enable  you  to  get  into  business, 
which  has  made  you  the  real  owner,  or  half- 
owner  of  these  notes,  and  then  insisting  on  a 
mortgage  on  their  homesteads  to  secure  these 
notes,  on  which  mortgages  you  absolutely  at- 
tempted to  foreclose  those  homesteads,  when 
you  knew  that  their  owners  were  away  and  that 
their  wives  were  widows,  at  the  time,  you  can- 
not now  refuse  to  accept  payment  in  full,  when 
it  is  tendered  to  you.  In  the  hope  that  all  of 
these  facts  may  enter  your  heart  as  a  blade  of 
steel,  and  that  they  may  produce  suitable  effects, 
I  am,  etc." 

"Confound  that  accursed  letter!  I  wish  I 
could  get  it  out  of  my  mind.  I  wish  I  had  sent 
them  those  mortgages  when  Lyman  told  me  that 
I  had  better  send  them,  for  then,  perhaps,  they 
would  have  accepted  them.  Now  I  shall  never 
hear  the  last  of  them.  Damn  that  interest  money 
that  they  have  just  sent  me  I  I  wouldn't  touch 
a  cent  of  it  for  a  kingdom.  I'll  burn  the  whole 
thing  up!"  So  saying,  he  threw  the  letter, 
check  and  all,  into  the  fire  and  watched  them 
burn  up  into  ashes. 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  95 

"I  wonder  what  is  coming  over  me, anyway!" 
he  soliloquized.  "I  am  getting  as  nervous  as  a 
rat.  It  seems  to  me  that  people  are  avoiding 
me.  Even  my  wife  shivers,  if  I  happen  to  touch 
her,  just  as  though  she  had  been  touched  by  a 
viper.  God!  It's  fearful!" 

Once  more  the  annual  stockholders'  meeting 
is  in  session.  "My  profits  have  been  $500,000," 
said  Lyman. 

"I  have  an  anomalous  state  of  affairs,"  said 
Henry.  "In  the  first  place,  we  forgot  to  vote 
ourselves  any  salary  at  the  last  meeting.  In  the 
next  place,  we  neglected  to  make  any  arrange- 
ments about  our  profits  at  that  meeting,  so  that 
I  have  been  carrying  $1,000,000  as  a  surplus, 
with  only  $500,000  capital  stock,  this  year." 

"You  have  not  advertised  this  surplus,  have 
you?" 

"No,  I  have  not." 

"Then  it  is  easily  settled.  What  are  our  aver- 
age deposits?" 

"About  $6,500,000." 

"Loans  and  discounts?" 

"About  $6, 250,  ooo,  at  8  per  cent  per  annum." 

"Short-time  brokerage?" 

"About  $300,000,  above  all  expenses." 

"Diamond  brokerage?" 

"About  $300,000  clear  profits." 


96  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

"That  is  $1,600,000  clear  profits,  $800,000 
each.  How  does  that  compare  with  the  salary 
of  the  president  of  the  United  States,  eh, Henry  ?" 

"Eight  hundred  thousand  dollars  each,  clear 
profits,  in  one  year!  It  seems  almost  incredible!" 
said  Henry. 

"But  there  are  the  figures  to  prove  it,Henr}'." 

"I  know  it,  sir;  there  is  no  doubt  about  it." 

"I  guess  we  had  better  increase  the  capital 
stock  of  the  bank  to  $3,000,000,  hadn't  we, 
Henry?" 

"I  think  so,  decidedly." 

"And  our  salaries?" 

"The  bank  cleared  over  $800,000  clear  prof- 
its." 

"And  will  beat  that  badly  next  year." 

"Then  I  think  we  might  vote  ourselves  a  sal- 
ary of  $500,000  each,  this  next  year,  to  make  up 
for  not  getting  any  salary  this  year,  don't  you?" 

"I  think  so,  decidedly,  sir." 

"But  we  must  remember  that  we  will  have  to 
declare  a  dividend  on  $3,000,000  capital  stock 
next  year,  instead  of  on  a  measly  $500,000  of 
this  year." 

"That  is  so.  Quite  a  rise,  isn't  it?  But  then, 
I  think  there  will  be  plenty  of  money,  even  for 
that." 

"There  is  no  doubt  of  it,  sir." 


THE   MODERN  BANKER  97 

"Henry,  I  have  a  scheme." 

"What  is  it,  sir?" 

"I  am  compelled  to  keep  more  or  less  money 
in  Washington  all  the  time,  anyway.  Why  not 
take,  say  about  $100,000  down  there  and  start  a 
branch  bank?" 

"That  is  a  capital  idea." 

"Then  I  will  do  that,  when  I  return." 

"You  can  take  down  some  of  the  boys  from 
here  to  aid." 

"So  I  was  thinking.  They  understand  our 
methods." 

"Certainly, and  can  train  others  to  help  them." 

"This  has  been  rather  a  quiet  year  for  the 
lobby.  We  killed  several  bills  and  passed  two 
or  three.  But  our  best  work  has  been  done  on 
the  press.  Yes,  sir,  we  have  accomplished  great 
results  on  the  papers.  You  could  not  get  a 
corporal's  guard  out  of  all  of  the  great  dailies, 
that  would  oppose  any  measure  that  we  advo- 
cate. I  have  reports  from  allof  our  banks,  and  I 
am  glad  to  see  that  they  are  taking  such  a  prom- 
inent stand  in  politics.  And  they  are  electing 
our  men,  everywhere.  In  a  few  years  we  will 
be  able  to  call  in  the  greenbacks  and  demone- 
tize silver.  Yes,  sir,  everything  is  coming  our 
way,  and  easily,  at  that." 


CHAPTER  X. 

THE  reconstruction  of  Missouri  had  been  com- 
pleted and  it  had  once  more  taken  its  place 
under  the  Stars  and  Stripes.  Candidates  were 
being  announced  for  the  various  offices,  and 
politicians  had  begun  engineering  their  various 
schemes.  With  one  accord,  his  old  soldiers 
turned  to  Colonel  Hunt  to  make  the  race  for 
Congress.  He  was  the  unanimous  choice  of  the 
Democratic  party,  and  his  nomination  was  ac- 
complished with  a  whoop.  His  great  personal 
popularity,  his  unswerving  honesty,  his  well- 
known  integrity  and  his  unsurpassed  eloquence 
made  him  a  strong  candidate,  but  he  found  that 
the  opposition  was  very  strong.  Money  was  be- 
ing used  freely  in  the  attempt  to  elect  a  young 
banker,who  had  been  chosen  by  the  Republican 
party,  as  their  candidate  to  Congress.  This 
banker  had  applied  to  Mr.  Lyman  for  aid,  and 
that  gentleman,  remembering  Henry's  cruelty 
to  his  family,  had  promptly  refused  to  advance 
a  single  cent.  He  was  rather  rejoiced  to  see 
Henry's  brother  rising  to  be  of  some  conse- 

98 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  99 

quence  in  his  district,  and  would  have  gladly 
donated  something  to  aid  him  and  his  cause, had 
the  chance  of  doing  so  appeared  to  him.  Mr. 
Lyman  had  no  politics.  He  was  all  things  to 
all  men.  But  perhaps  the  only  circumstance 
that  had  ever  worked  on  his  sympathies  was 
Henry's  cruelty  to  his  relatives.  He  felt  so  safe 
in  his  position,  as  leader  of  the  lobby  for  the 
bankers,  that  he  decided  that  one  congressman 
could  not  do  him  much  harm,  and  therefore  he 
was  anxious  to  see  Colonel  Hunt  elected.  These 
were  the  circumstances,  when  Mr.  Lyman  went 
to  New  York  to  attend  the  next  "annual  stock- 
holders' meeting"  of  the  two  banks. 

"Well,  how    does    the    new   bank   flourish?" 
asked  Henry. 

"Oh,  I  guess  we  are  doing  very  well." 

"What  are  your  average  deposits?" 

"About  $350,000?" 

"Pretty  good  for  the  first  year.    And  loans?" 

"About  $300,000,  at  8  per  cent  per  annum." 

"Short-time  brokerage?" 

"Paid  all  expenses." 

"Lobby  profits?" 

"About  $500,000." 

"That  makes  about  $525,000  clear  profits." 

"Yes.   What  are  our  average  deposits  in  New 
York?" 


IOO  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

"About  $10,000,000." 

"Loans  and  discounts?" 

"About  $9,750,000,  at  8  per  cent  per  annum." 

"Short-time  brokerage?" 

"Paid  $400,000  above  all  expenses  of  the 
bank." 

"Diamond  brokerage?" 

"About  $400,000  clear  profits,  this  year." 

"Ah,  then  your  total  profits  are  $1,580,000 
this  year." 

"Which,  added  to  your  profits,  makes  over 
$2,000,000." 

"Yes,  Henry,  we  have  made  over  $1,000,000 
apiece." 

"A  pretty  good  year's  work,  I  should  sayl" 

"Especially  when  we  only  work  six  hours 
per  day!" 

"And  not  very  hard  work  at  that,"  laughing. 

"Ah,  Henry,  how  does  that  compare  with  be- 
ing president?" 

"Pshaw!  That  beats  being  king  of  England!" 

"Yes,  for  we  have  no  worries  whatever." 

"You  are  right,  sir,  you  are  right." 

After  increasing  the  capital  stock  of  the  New 
York  bank  to  $5,000,000,  agreeing  on  a  salary 
of  $750,000  each  for  that  bank,  and  of  $10,000 
each  for  the  bank  at  Washington,  Mr.  Lyman 
said:  "Oh,  yes,  I  wanted  to  tell  you  some  good 


THE   MODERN   BANKER  IO1 

news, myself.  I  am  to  be  married  to  the  Countess 
Ilman,  during  the  holidays  of  Congress,  and 
would  like  to  have  you  bring  your  family  down." 

"Certainly.     Allow  me  to  congratulate  you." 

"And  I  expect  you  will  meet  your  brother 
there." 

"Meet  my  brother  at  your  wedding!  What 
do  you  mean  ?" 

"He  will  be  elected  to  Congress  next  month, 
and  I  expect  to  invite  him  to  come  to  my  wed- 
ding. I  want  to  get  acquainted  with  him.  He 
has  quite  taken  my  fancy,  and  as  the  lobby  will 
have  such  a  large  majority  in  the  next  Congress, 
I  have  not  opposed  your  brother's  election,  al- 
though they  tell  me  he  is  one  of  the  strongest 
'Anti-bankers'  in  the  country." 

Henry  was  bewildered,  and  for  an  hour  or 
more  he  remained  in  his  seat  studying  the  mat- 
ter over.  "Arthur  in  Congress!"  he  soliloquized. 
"What  on  earth  does  he  want  to  go  to  Congress 
for?  Who  on  earth  is  sending  him?  Oh,  I  know 
him!  He  hates  me  and  wants  a  chance  to  work 
against  me  at  Washington!  He  intends  to  try 
to  pass  a  law  against  the  bankers,  just  because 
I  am  one  of  them!  There  is  no  turning  him, and 
he  will  soon  be  popular.  He  always  was  pop- 
ular. Everybody  always  likes  him.  What  shall 
I  do?  I  know.  I  will  defeat  him.  I  will  go 


102  THE   MODERN   BANKER 

down  there  in  person  and  help  defeat  him. 
Money  will  do  anything.  I'm  off  to-morrow." 

It  was  still  three  weeks  to  the  election,  when 
Henry  arrived,  but  he  was  soon  closeted  with 
the  Republican  leaders,  who  had  out  their  bands 
and  were  marching  the  streets  that  very  night. 
Henry  stopped  at  a  hotel  in  town,  and  did  not 
attempt  to  see  any  of  his  relatives.  He  had  busi- 
ness on  hand  and  he  was  attending  to  it.  He 
used  money  freely  and  carried  everything  before 
him.  The  managers  of  his  party  were  enthusi- 
astic and  his  strikers  were  hard  at  work.  Every 
man  who  could  make  a  speech  in  public,  favor- 
ing the  Republicans,  found  himself  with  a  brass 
band  at  his  command,  and  plenty  of  shouters  to 
cheer  him  at  every  point. 

Colonel  Hunt  was  depressed.  Not  so  much 
at  the  idea  of  defeat,  as  at  the  methods  that  were 
at  work  to  defeat  him.  He  said  nothing  about 
his  brother,  in  his  speeches,  but  he  exposed  the 
methods  of  the  opposition  mercilessly.  He 
found  that  he  had  gathered  about  him  all  of  the 
prominent  men  in  his  district,  but  it  looked  very 
much  as  though  the  rabble  would  be  able  to 
outvote  his  friends.  The  real  animus  of  the  fight 
was  soon  discovered.  The  people  understood 
the  reason  why  Henry  was  making  such  a  des- 
perate fight  against  his  own  brother,  and  many 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  I 03 

of  the  leading  Republicans  at  once  advocated 
Colonel  Hunt's  election.  Every  speech  he  made 
won  him  friends.  Every  attack  on  him  by 
Henry  caused  some  thinking  man  to  come  over 
to  his  side.  But  Henry  was  spending  money 
freely.  He  was  a  consummate  manager,  and 
everything  possible  was  done  and  well  done. 
Election  day  and  its  fights,  broils  and  bitterness 
came  and  passed  at  last,  and  it  was  found  that 
Colonel  Hunt  had  been  elected  by  a  small  ma- 
jority. 

Henry  had  spent  $100,000  and  was  defeated, 
and  he  left  town  for  New  York,  while  the  guns 
were  celebrating  his  brother's  victory. 

Colonel  Hunt's  entrance  into  Congress  was 
uneventful.  He  began  studying  the  situation  he 
found  himself  in  with  great  interest.  Here  he 
found  the  hardest  problem  he  had  yet  met  with. 
It  was  a  stupendous  affair.  He  was  certain  of 
that.  It  seemed  to  him  that  every  action  of 
Congress  was  wrapped  in  such  a  cloak  of  rules 
and  regulations,  as  to  utterly  befuddle  the  brain 
of  ordinary  people.  He  saw  members  fighting 
over  minor  rules  and  precedents,  instead  of 
really  trying  to  pass  any  legislation  of  any  kind. 
He  found  that  here  the  game  of  politics  became 
a  science.  Here,  men  consulted  the  interest  of 
their  political  party,  instead  of  the  interests  of 


104  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

the  whole  people.  To  him  it  seemed  that  Con- 
gress was  being  used  to  further  the  interest  of 
its  members, rather  than  the  interests  of  the  peo- 
ple who  had  to  pay  the  bills.  He  saw  measures 
passed  with  a  wink  and  a  nod.  He  soon  saw 
that  there  was  an  outside  influence  at  work.  He 
made  up  his  mind  to  ferret  this  influence  out 
and  see  who  and  what  was  at  the  back  of  it. 
He  said  but  little,  but  took  note  of  everything 
that  was  done.  After  a  time  he  became  aware 
of  the  fact  that  every  measure  that  was  really 
passed,  almost,  was  one  that  favored  the  money- 
lords,  the  bankers  or  the  railroads. 

Colonel  Hunt  was  surprised  to  find  his  name 
mentioned  as  one  of  the  members  of  the  Com- 
mittee on  Finance  and  Banking,  and  he  won- 
dered who,  or  what  influence  had  placed  it  there. 
It  was  the  one  committee  that  he  really  desired 
to  get  on,  and  he  felt  very  much  gratified  to  find 
that  he  had  secured  the  place  so  easily.  At  the 
first  meeting  of  the  committee,  he  made  the  ac- 
quaintance of  all  the  members  and  began  a  care- 
ful study  of  their  characters.  He  readily  decided 
that  there  were  part  of  them  open,  fair,  honest 
men,  but  he  was  not  so  sure  about  the  rest.  In 
fact,  he  felt  sure  that  some  of  them  were  the  paid 
instruments  of  the  banks.  He  found  that  a  rec- 
ommendation from  a  banker  was  more  respected 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  I 05 

than  one  from  the  president.  He  found  that  a 
letter  from  a  banker  was  given  more  attention 
than  a  petition  singed  by  a  thousand  good  citi- 
zens. It  had  appeared  to  him  that  it  would  be  a 
good  idea  for  him  to  go  slow  and  be  careful  that 
he  understood  the  situation  before  he  took  a 
stand  in  any  way,  so  he  acted  on  this  idea,  and 
found  it  a  good  one.  He  soon  found  that  he 
was  respected  by  the  members  of  his  committee, 
because  he  seldom  took  a  wrong  stand,  and 
readily  changed  his  views  if  he  found  that  he 
was  wrong.  But  this  committee  soon  found 
that  he  was  as  firm  as  a  rock, once  he  became  as- 
sured that  he  was  right. 

The  first  two  weeks  of  Congress  had  passed 
and  he  was  beginning  to  feel  at  home  in  his  new 
position,  when  one  evening,  just  as  he  and  an- 
other member  of  the  committee  were  leaving  the 
committee  room,  he  was  introduced  to  Mr.  Ly- 
man,  whom  he  found  to  be  a  gentleman  of  the 
most  pleasing  manners  he  had  yet  met.  He  had 
no  idea  that  this  was  his  brother's  partner,  nor 
did  he  dream  that  he  was  the  manager  of  the 
lobby.  The  two  men  looked  each  other  over, 
talked  a  few  minutes  and  parted  with  the  ex- 
pression that  they  might  meet  again.  And  on 
the  next  day  they  did  meet  again,  and  having 
some  time  at  their  disposal,  they  engaged  in  an 


IO6  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

animated  conversation  about  some  pending  legis- 
lation. 

Colonel  Hunt  had  insisted  on  bringing  his 
wife  to  Washington  with  him.  They  had  rented 
a  quiet  little  furnished  house,  well-located  and 
at  a  reasonable  rent,  where  they  were  living 
very  quietly,  but  very  happily.  Mamie  was 
rather  enjoying  her  new  situation  and  had  formed 
many  pleasant  acquaintances, among  them  being 
the  famous  Countess  Ilman,  whom  Mamie  at 
once  decided  to  be  one  of  the  most  pleasant  ladies 
she  had  met.  Countess  Ilman  was  one  of  those 
ladies  who  have  the  power  to  charm  at  will.  No 
one  could  withstand  the  power  of  her  blandish- 
ments, when  she  chose  to  exert  them.  Mamie 
fell  an  easy  conquest,  and  Henry  looked  on  with 
a  smile.  Countess  Ilman  was  received  in  the 
best  houses  in  Washington;  she  was  pleasant, 
accomplished,  vivacious,  amusing  and  very 
pretty.  Her  father  chaperoned  her  everywhere, 
and  she  seemed  to  be  the  life  of  the  circle  she 
moved  in.  And  almost  before  she  knew  it,  she 
and  Mamie  were  confidential  friends.  In  fact, 
it  was  the  Countess  Ilman  who  readily  chose 
most  of  her  friends  for  Mamie,  and  was  her 
most  valued  instructor  and  adviser,  in  all  of  the 
hundreds  of  little  things  on  which  Mamie  needed 
experience  in  entertaining  and  in  all  society 


THE   MODERN   BANKER  1<>7 

customs.  Mr.  Lyman  and  the  Countess  Ilman 
had  both  met  at  the  residence  of  Colonel  Hunt, 
and  then  it  was  that  the  Countess  had  confided 
to  Mamie  that  she  and  Mr.  Lyman  were  going 
to  be  married  during  the  holidays  of  Congress, 
which  were  now  only  two  weeks  away.  This 
news  received  due  congratulations  from  both  the 
Colonel  and  his  wife,  and  they  readily  accepted 
an  invitation  to  be  present  when  the  ceremony 
was  performed. 


CHAPTER    XI. 

/• 

THE  first  month  of  Congress  never  amounts  to 
much.  The  president's  message  is  read,  dis- 
cussed and  forgotten.  Reports  of  the  cabinet 
officers,  ditto.  The  offices  in  both  houses  are 
filled,  after  a  wrangle.  The  members  are  sworn 
in,  seats  are  drawn  for  and  swapped  off.  The 
new  congressmen  get  acquainted  and  learn  how 
to  ride  the  congressional  goat.  A  war  or  two 
is  threatened  and  peace  is  restored.  People 
wander  around  the  galleries  and  wonder  what 
on  earth  it  all  means.  The  hotels  are  all  crowded 
and  some  greenhorn  is  continually  getting  into 
the  wrong  room,  or  blows  out  the  gas,  or  rings 
the  fire  alarm  in  on  all  the  guests,  until  finally 
the  machine  has  ground  out  the  committees  and 
all  the  members  kick  up  a  row  because  they  did 
not  get  on  all  of  the  committees.  Then  Con- 
gress adjourns  for  the  holidays.  A  month  has 
been  used  to  do  not  over  three  days'  work, but — 
it's  the  program  and  it  is  always  carried  out,  to 
the  letter. 

Henry  kept  himself  posted  about  all  of  his 
108 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  109 

brother's  movements, and  his  continued  success, 
both  in  Congress  and  in  society,  was  as  worm- 
wood and  gall  in  Henry's  heart.  Poor  fellow! 
He  was  beginning  to  find  out  that  there  are  some 
things  in  this  world  that  money  cannot  buy, and 
that  happiness  was  one  of  them.  He  knew  that 
Mr.  Lyman  did  not  approve' of  his  conduct  to- 
wards his  brother,  and  he  felt  that  there  was  a 
coldness  springing  up  between  him  and  his 
partner,  but  he  felt  that  he  could  not  help  it. 
He  had  forgotten  that  it  was  Mr.Lyman's  hand 
and  head  that  had  landed  him  in  his  present 
position  in  life.  Perhaps  he  did  not  know  that 
it  was  L}'man's  name  that  gave  his  bank  its  sta- 
bility and  reputation  in  the  business  world,  but 
this  was  true.  The  reader  must  remember  that 
the  world  knew  nothing  of  Mr.  Lyman's  con- 
nection with  the  lobby  at  Washington.  It  must 
also  be  remembered  that  he  made  frequent  visits 
to  New  York,  where  he  was  regarded  as  one 
of  the  shrewdest  financiers  in  the  metropolis. 

Every  man  who  perpetrates  one  outrageous 
wrong  will  have  to  prop  it  up  with  other 
wrongs, unless  he  has  the  moral  courage  to  retrace 
his  steps,  acknowledge  his  error  and  correct  it. 
Henry  did  not  have  this  courage,  so  he  had  at- 
tempted to  prop  up  his  first  outrage  against  his 
parents  and  his  brother,  by  committing  other 


IIO  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

outrages  against  them.  He  had  done  this  so  long 
now,  that  he  felt  that  it  was  a  personal  injury  to 
him  for  any  one  else  to  be  kind  to  them.  Mr. 
Lyman 's  sympathies  were  with  his  partner's  re- 
lations from  the  day  that  Henry  refused  to  can- 
cel the  mortgages,  as  he  had  suggested,  and  the 
breach  was  gradually  widening  between  them. 
On  meeting  Colonel  Hunt  and  his  wife,  Mr. 
Lyman  was  really  charmed  with  them.  So  was 
the  Countess  Ilman.  A  strong  friendship  sprang 
up  between  these  parties  at  once, and  subsequent 
acquaintance  had  ripened  this  into  a  lasting  re- 
spect for  each  other.  Without  knowing  it, 
Colonel  Hunt  and  his  wife  were  exerting  a  great 

O          O 

influence  for  good  over  Mr.Lyman  and  his  future 
wife.  The  purity  of  the  one  was  shaming  the 
baseness  of  the  other.  This  friendship  had 
awakened  in  the  breast  of  Mr.  Lyman  and  his 
fiancee  a  desire  to  be  really  better  and  a  feeling 
that  it  was  their  duty  to  lead  better  lives.  Not 
that  either  of  them  had  ever  been  outrageously 
wicked  in  any  way,  outside  of  the  methods  that 
their  business  in  life  had  caused  them  to  adopt. 
While  the  Countess  Ilman  had  turned  the 
head  of  many  a  green  legislator  by  her  blandish- 
ments, it  had  all  been  done  for  a  purpose;  it  was 
part  of  her  business  to  do  this.  But  in  her  private 
life  she  had  been  as  chaste  as  an  angel.  In  her 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  III 

breast  was  a  heart  that  beat  as  unselfishly  and 
as  purely  as  that  of  a  babe  unborn.  Mr.Lyman 
had  found  out  her  sterling  qualities  and  had 
fallen  in  love  with  her.  She  had  returned  his 
affection  and  they  were  soon  to  be  married. 
Colonel  Hunt  and  his  wife  had  won  their  entire 
confidence  and  respect  from  the  first,  and  no 
thought  of  attempting  to  influence  him,  as  lob- 
byists, had  ever  entered  their  heads.  It  was  a 
friendship  of  the  purest  sort,  springing  from  the 
b'est  of  motives.  And  it  was  a  strange  thing, 
too,  that  the  king  and  queen  of  the  Washington 
congressional  lobby  should  feel  such  a  great 
friendship  for  the  man  and  woman  who  were  by 
both  inclination  and  position  bound  to  be  the 
greatest  enemies  of  that  lobby.  It  was  one  of 
the  anomalies  to  be  met  with  in  politics  every- 
where. But  as  yet  neither  side  of  the  contest 
acknowledged  the  other  as  an  opponent.  Both 
were  on  terms  of  neutrality  at  present,  but  each 
of  them  was  destined  to  feel  the  prowess  of  the 
other,  sooner  or  later. 

Henry  now  did  one  more  outrageous  thing, 
and  made  one  more  mistake.  He  wrote  Mr. 
Lyman  a  letter,  saying  that  if  it  was  his  inten- 
tion to  invite  his  brother  and  his  brother's  wife 
to  the  wedding,  it  would  be  impossible  for  him 
to  attend.  This  practically  forced  Mr.  Lyman 


112  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

to  choose  between  his  partner  and  his  friend, 
and  their  families,  as  guests  at  his  marriage; 
but  the  decision  was  prompt  and  effective.  He 
wrote  Henry  a  long  letter,  telling  him  that  his 
brother  had  been  invited  and  had  accepted  the 
invitation,  so  that  it  would  be  impossible  to  call 
the  invitation  off.  He  mentioned  the  fact  that 
he  had  personally  told  Henry  that  he  expected 
to  invite  Colonel  Hunt  and  family,  when  he  had 
invited  Henry,  and  that  no  objection  had  then 
been  raised.  He  regretted  the  unpleasant  posi- 
tion that  matters  were  in,  and  finished  his  letter 
with  an  invitation  to  Henry  to  drop  the  old  feud 
and  be  reconciled  to  his  brother.  It  was  a  manly 
letter  to  write,  full  of  respect  and  careful  of  the 
feelings  of  the  receiver,  but  it  stung  Henry  to 
the  quick  and  he  resented  it  bitterly.  He  wrote 
a  gruff  note  to  Mr.  Lyman,  informing  him  that 
it  would  be  impossible  for  him  to  attend  the  wed- 
ding, and  extending  congratulations  in  a  formal 
fashion. 

The  wedding  was  a  grand  affair,  but  of  a  quiet 
order.  They  were  married  by  a  Chief  Justice, 
in  one  of  the  leading  churches,  which  was  elab- 
orately decorated.  All  of  the  leading  members 
of  Congress  who  had  remained  in  the  city,  and 
a  number  of  notables,  were  there.  Colonel  Hunt, 
although  a  married  man,  was  pressed  into  the 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  113 

services  of  best  man,  because  the  Countess  in- 
sisted on  having  Mamie  act  as  chief  bridesmaid. 
As  a  whole,  the  affair  was  a  success,  although 
Henry  and  his  wife  refused  to  be  present.  How- 
ever, as  but  little  was  known  of  them  in  Wash- 
ington, this  created  very  little  talk.  During  all 
this  time  Colonel  Hunt  and  his  wife  had  no  idea 
that  Mr.  Lyman  was  Henry's  partner,  and  as  it 
was  March  before  the  wedding  tour  ended,  they 
remained  in  ignorance  of  this  important  fact 
until  that  time. 

Mr.  Lyman  left  another  man  in  charge  of  the 
lobby  while  he  was  gone  on  his  wedding  tour, 
and  as  soon  as  Congress  reassembled,  this  man 
began  work  on  the  herculean  task  of  "destroy- 
ing the  greenbacks."  He  was  not  so  astute  as 
Mr.  Lyman  had  been,  nor  was  he  so  able  in  his 
management  of  affairs.  It  so  happened  that  the 
lobbyists  had  secured  exactly  one-half  of  the 
Committee  on  Finance  and  Banking  to  favor  a 
report  asking  Congress  to  call  in  the  green- 
backs. The  other  half  stood  out  against  the 
measure, and  it  required  the  vote  of  Colonel  Hunt 
to  get  the  measure  before  the  House.  Mr. 
Green,  the  present  manager  of  the  lobby,  was 
in  a  sore  perplexity.  He  had  met  Colonel  Hunt 
several  times,  and  he  felt  a  little  afraid  to  ap- 
proach him  on  the  subject  of  a  bribe,  but  it  so 


114  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

happened  that  he  knew  Henry  Hunt,  in  New 
York,  so  he  said  to  himself:  "Henry  Hunt 
would  sell  his  chance  of  Heaven  for  money. 
This  is  his  brother.  I  will  risk  it.  I  must  have 
his  vote.  I  will  bid  so  high  that  none  but  a  fool 
would  refuse." 

Accordingly,  he  called  on  Colonel  Hunt  and 
asked  him  to  support  the  measure,  saying,  at 
the  same  time,  that  it  would  be  worth  $100,000 
to  him  if  he  would  vote  for  the  measure  and 
help  him  to  pass  it  through  the  House.  For  a 
moment,  Colonel  Hunt  felt  like  knocking  the 
man  down,  then,  on  second  thoughts,  he  an- 
swered: "If  you  desire  my  aid  in  this  matter, 
you  must  first  give  me  a  full  outline  of  your 
plans.  I  cannot  afford  to  undertake  to  aid  you 
unless  I  know  all  the  grounds  I  am  expected  to 
travel  over.  Nor  can  I  afford  to  go  into  it  un- 
less I  know  who  will  aid  me  to  carry  it  through." 

"Ah!"  thought  Mr.  Green,  "he  is  just  like 
his  brother.  Wants  to  know  all  the  ins  and  outs 
and  chances  of  danger,  but  ready  enough  if  it 
pays  well  and  there  is  but  little  danger  of  detec- 
tion!" With  this  idea  in  his  mind,  Mr.  Green 
gave  Colonel  Hunt  a  detailed  account  of  all  of 
the  lobby's  plans,  telling  him  that  a  majority  of 
the  members  of  the  House  owed  their  election 
to  a  promise  made  to  the  bankers  in  their  home 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  I  15 

districts,  that  they  would  vote  for  the  recall  of 
the  greenbacks,  and  a  substitution  of  national 
bank  notes  in  their  place. 

"Give  me  a  list  of  the  names  of  these  men, 
that  I  may  consult  them  before  I  decide,"  finally 
said  Colonel  Hunt. 

"Very  well,  sir;  I  suppose  that  I  can  trust  you 
to  be  very  particular  in  this  matter." 

"Certainly." 

With  that  a  full  list  of  the  names  and  all  par- 
ticulars were  handed  to  him;  after  which  Mr. 
Green  asked  him  when  he  could  see  him  again, 
ready  to  pay  the  money,  if  Colonel  Hunt  was 
satisfied  to  act. 

"Two  days  hence,  at  this  hour  and  at  this 
place." 

"Very  well,  sir;  I  will  be  here,  with  the 
money." 

"God  forgive  me  for  this  treachery,  even  to  a 
lobbyist,  which  I  believe  my  duty  demands!" 
was  the  prayer  of  this  noble-minded  man,  as  he 
retired  that  night,  after  thinking  over  the  matter 
in  all  of  its  phases,  and  deciding  on  his  line  of 
conduct  for  the  morrow. 

Next  day  he  called  on  every  member  named 
in  the  list  Mr.  Green  had  furnished  him,  and 
after  giving  the  countersign  and  password, 
found  that  they  were  all  very  willing  to  talk  of 


Il6  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

the  matter,  expressing  themselves  as  ready  to 
comply  with  their  part  of  the  program  and  vote 
for  the  measure,  as  soon  as  he  should  report  it 
favorably  to  the  House.  They  all  seemed  most 
anxious  to  get  the  matter  attended  to  as  quickly 
and  as  quietly  as  possible.  And  when  Colonel 
Hunt  asked  them  if  they  were  not  afraid  that 
their  constituents  would  hear  of  the  measure 
and  repudiate  them  at  the  next  election,  they 
all  replied,  as  one  man:  "What  do  the  common 
people  know  about  such  things?  They  cannot 
tell  a  bank  note  from  a  treasur}'  note  to  save  their 
lives.  And  what  if  they  do  hear  of  it.  A  bank 
note  is  just  as  good  as  a  treasury  note  any- 
way!" 

"But  will  it  not  give  the  banks  the  power  to 
corner  the  currency,  as  well  as  the  gold,  at  any 
time?" 

"Oh,  as  to  that,  the  banks  will  let  us  have  all 
the  money  we  can  give  them  security  for,  any- 
way." 

One  big-hearted  country  greenhorn,  whom 
the  banks,  out  in  some  backwoods  district,  had 
elected  to  Congress,  offered  to  loan  the  colonel 
his  "book  uv  instrucshuns  de  banks  give  me 
afore  they  elected  me,"  which  was  thankfully 
accepted  by  Colonel  Hunt. 

Colonel  Hunt  met  Mr. Green  at  the  appointed 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  117 

place, and  the  following  conversation  took  place- 
"Are  you  satisfied,  Colonel  Hunt?" 
"  I  am,  most  assuredly.     Everything  you  told 
me  is  absolutely  true." 

"Then  here  is  your  money,  sir.  You  will  find 
one  hundred  one-thousand-dollar  bills  in  that 
package." 

"I  do  not  doubt  it,  sir.     Many  thanks." 
"Oh,  not  at  all.      When  will  you  present  the 
bill?" 

"To-morrow  afternoon  at  two  o'clock.  Have 
all  of  your  men  on  hand.  I  will  present  the 
bill  myself,  and  expect  to  make  a  speech  on  it." 
Around  the  memory  of  that  famous  day  in 
February,  all  patriotic  Americans  ought  to  hang 
the  emblem  of  Liberty, arising  out  of  the  Morass 
of  Corruption,  for  then  and  there  it  was  that  one 
of  the  grandest  fights  for  America,  ever  waged, 
was  won  by  Col.  Arthur  Hunt.  Every  member 
on  the  lobby  list  was  in  his  seat, and  all  the  galler- 
ies were  crowded  to  suffocation  by  their  friends. 
The  silence  of  death  fell  on  the  house  as  Colonel 
Hunt  arose  in  his  seat  and  addressed  the  speaker. 
"Mr.  Speaker:  I  arise  to  a  question  of  per- 
sonal privilege.  It  is  my  painful  duty  to  expose 
a  plot  against  the  rights  of  our  people,  which, in 
its  awful  effects  on  mankind,  if  carried  out, 
makes  me  tremble  even  in  contemplation  of  it. 


Il8  THE   MODERN    BANKEft 

Sir,  I  am  in  possession  of  incontrovertible  evi- 
dence that  will  convict  the  bankers  of  the  United 
States  of  electing  a  majority  of  the  members  of 
this  present  House  of  Representatives,  for  the 
express  purpose,  and  on  a  regular  contract,  that 
they  shall  pass  a  law  withdrawing  all  of  our 
United  States  Notes, commonly  call  Greenbacks, 
from  circulation,  arid  substituting  therefor,  Na- 
tional Bank  Notes.  Yes,  sir,  and  more  than 
this!  I  hold  in  my  hand  a  bribe  of  $100,000, 
which  was  given  to  me,  as  chairman  of  your 
Committee  of  Finance  and  Banking,  to  induce 
me  to  report  favorably  the  bill  which  has  been 
agreed  upon  by  the  conspirators,  to  accomplish 
this  accursed  result. 

"And  what  is  worse  still,  I  stand  prepared  to 
prove  that  this  present  House  of  Representatives 
is  honeycombed  with  corruption.  It  stands 
here  as  the  servants  of  the  bankers  and  the  rail- 
roads, ready  to  do  the  bidding  of  their  masters, 
as  commanded  to  do  by  a  lobby  so  bold  and  so 
grasping  that  it  is  now  demanding  that  we  shall 
turn  over  our  last  vestige  of  governmental 
money  and  allow  the  banks  to  issue  a  money 
that  they  can  control  for  their  own  benefit  and 
against  the  best  interests  of  the  people.  I  assert, 
sir,  that  it  is  impossible  to  get  this  present  House 
of  Representatives  to  pass  one  single  law  that  is 
not  dictated  by  the  banks  or  the  railroads. 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  119 

"When  our  forefathers  formed  our  Constitu- 
tion, they  expressly  withheld  the  right  to  make 
money  from  all  parties  and  corporations,  and 
relegated  to  this  Congress  the  power  and  the 
duty  to  make  and  maintain  the  money  of  the 
people.  Preceding  sessions  of  Congress  have 
farmed  out  this  sacred  right  to  a  certain  class  of 
our  citizens,  called  bankers,  who  have  grown 
fat  off  the  misfortunes  of  our  people,  which 
their  own  accursed  methods  have  fostered  and 
created.  Not  content  with  this,  they  have  bribed 
over  one-half  of  the  members  of  this  present 
House  of  Representatives,  by  electing  them  to 
their  seats  on  a  promise  that  they  will  vote  away 
the  only  part  of  our  currency  that  these  bankers 
cannot  corner  and  control,  for  their  own  inter- 
ests.. 

"We  Americans  have  prided  ourselves  on  our 
'free  and  independent  press'  heretofore,  but  I 
stand  here  to-day  and  denounce  the  great  ma- 
jority of  our  leading  newspapers,  as  being  under 
the  influence  of  those  bankers  so  far  that  they 
will  not  dare  give  this  speech  of  mine,  even  as 
a  news  item,  to-morrow  morning.  I  hold  in  my 
hand  a  circular  issued  by  the  American  Bankers' 
Association  of  Wall  Street,  New  York,  which  ' 
gives  instructions  to  all  of  the  bankers  of  the 
United  States  to  patronize  only  such  papers  as 


I2O  THE    MODERN    JJANKER 

will  advocate  the  withdrawal  of  all  of  the  Green- 
back money  from  circulation,  and  to  withhold 
patronage  from  all  papers  that  will  not  advocate 
this  measure.  God  knows  that  I  do  not  blame 
the  poor  papers,  for  they  cannot  live  without  the 
patronage  of  the  bankers,  especially  if  the  bank- 
ers should  use  their  influence  against  them.  We 
must  do  away  with  the  bankers,  before  we  can 
ever  have  a  'free  and  untrammeled  press'  again. 
That  much  is  certain. 

"And  this  same  circular  goes  still  further,sir. 
It  instructs  the  bankers  of  the  United  States  as 
follows: 

'"Let  the  Government  issue  the  Coin  and  the 
Banks  issue  the  Paper  Money  of  this  country, 
for  then  we  can  better  protect  each  other.  To  re- 
peal the  law  creating  National  Bank  Notes,  or 
to  restore  to  circulation  the  governmental  issue 
of  money,  will  be  to  -provide  the  people  with 
money,  and  will,  therefore,  seriously  affect  your 
individual  profits,  as  bankers  and  lenders.  SEE 
YOUR  CONGRESSMAN  at  once,  AND  ENGAGE  HIM 
TO  SUPPORT  OUR  INTERESTS,  THAT  WE  MAY 
CONTROL  LEGISLATION!' 

"My  God,  gentlemen!  These  are  facts!  Here 
are  the  original  documents.  I  stand  here  and 
wave  them  in  their  faces.  I  here  have  a  list 
of  the  Congressmen  of  this  present  House  of 
Representatives,  who,  no  longer  than  yesterday 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  121 

and  the  day  before,  acknowledged  to  me  that 
they  had  promised  the  banks  in  each  of  their 
districts  that  they  would  vote  for  the  recall  of 
the  Greenbacks,  and  for  the  substitution  of  Na- 
tional Bank  Notes  in  their  place,  before  the 
bankers  would  agree  to  give  their  influence  in 
favor  of  their  election,  and  these  men  are  pre- 
pared to  carry  out  their  part  of  this  unholy  con- 
tract, and  expected  me  to  report  this  atrocious 
measure  favorably  to  them  in  this  speech.  If 
any  gentlemen  in  this  House  doubt  my  state- 
ments, I  will  read  the  list  of  names  in  order  to 
convince  them.  No  one  answers,  so  I  will  pass 
the  list  to  any  committee  that  may  be  appointed 
to  investigate  these  charges,  when  called  upon. 

"No,  gentlemen!  I  cannot  report  this  meas- 
ure favorably.  I  accepted  your  bribe-money 
only  because  it  was  necessary  to  do  so,  so  as  to 
complete  my  evidence  against  you,  and  shall 
hold  it  subject  to  the  instructions  of  this  House, 
as  evidence.  As  for  me  and  mine,  I  want 
nothing  to  do  with  it.  I  thank  my  God  that  I 
have  never  made  a  dollar  that  did  not  come  to 
me  honestly!  It  is  my  daily  prayer  that  I  shall 
never  allow  myself  to  be  guilty  of  accepting  one 
cent  that  I  have  not  justly  earned.  I  thank  you, 
gentlemen,  for  your  kind  attention." 

The  Speaker,  as    is   usual   in  such  cases,  ap- 


122  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

pointed  a  committee,  naming  those  who  would 
have  been  criminated  had  these  charges  been 
properly  investigated,  to  investigate  the  charges 
made  by  Colonel  Hunt,  and  to  report  to  the 
House  their  findings,  at  their  convenience.  And 
although  Colonel  Hunt  watched  the  records  of 
Congress  carefully  for  many  years,  he  never 
knew  what  that  committee  ever  did  do  with 
those  charges.  However,  he  had  the  satisfac- 
tion of  hearing  one  report  that  they  made  a  few 
weeks  later.  They  found  "one  J.  W.  Green, 
whereabouts  unknown,  guilty  of  offering  a  bribe 
of  $100,000  to  Col.  Arthur  Hunt,  for  reporting 
a  measure  favorably  from  the  Committee  of 
Finance  and  Banking,  which  bribe  was  deliv- 
ered by  him  to  the  House  of  Representatives, 
with  a  forcible  denouncement  of  said  Green,  and 
others,  and  which  money  is  hereby  recommended 
to  be  used,  by  this  House,  for  the  purpose  of 
founding  an  Asylum  for  Indigent  and  Debilitated 
Ex-Congressmen,  in  Washington  City."  Which 
said  asj'lum  has  never  since  been  heard  of  by 
any  one. 

The  morning  papers  next  morning  gave  a 
short  description  of  the  way  in  which  Col.  Ar- 
thur Hunt  denounced  one  J.W.  Green  for  offer- 
ing him  a  bribe  to  induce  him  to  report  a  measure 
favorably,  which  he  refused  to  do. 


THE  MODERN  BANKER  123 

Now,  for  the  benefit  of  those  youthful  states- 
men who  expect  to  some  day  set  the  walls  of 
Congress  on  fire  by  their  eloquence  in  behalf  of 
the  rights  of  the  people,  the  author  is  compelled 
to  state  that  this  was  the  last  ever  heard  of  one  of 
the  grandest  speeches  ever  made  within  the  walls 
of  Congress,  in  behalf  of  the  rights  of  the  peo- 
ple. I  have  no  doubt  that  this  is  the  first  mention 
of  it  that  the  reader  ever  heard.  No,  my  dear 
boys, it  will  not  pay  you  to  waste  your  breath  on 
such  noble  sentiments  as  these,  before  the  mem- 
bers of  any  Congress  assembled  in  the  United 
States  in  recent  years.  It  will  be  time  and 
trouble  lost,  The  place  to  make  such  speeches 
as  this  was,  is  at  home,  before  the  people,  who 
are  honest,  and  who  believe  that  you  will  make 
them  in  their  favor  in  Washington.  But  it  is 
never  done  any  more.  Not  since  the  days  of  dear 
old  Patrick  Henry  and  Col.  Arthur  Hunt. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

IF  Bob  Ingersoll  will  carefully  consider  the 
promise  that  God  made  to  Abraham  of  old,  and 
then  trace  its  perfect  and  complete  fulfillment 
up  to  the  present  time,  it  will  surely  stagger  his 
agnosticism,  even  though  it  does  not  make  him 
a  complete  convert  to  Abraham's  God.  It  will 
be  remembered  that  when  Abraham  had  offered 
up  his  only  son,  Isaac,  as  a  burnt  offering,  and 
had  actually  tied  the  boy  to  the  bundle  of  fagots, 
and  was  stretching  out  his  hand  to  slay  the  child, 
an  angel  of  the  Lord  called  to  Abraham,  "out 
of  Heaven, "and  said :  "  By  myself  have  I  sworn, 
sayeth  the  Lord,  for  because  thou  hast  done  this 
thing,  and  has  not  withheld  thy  son,  thine  only 
son:  That  in  blessing  I  will  bless  thee,  and  in 
multiplying  I  will  multiply  thy  seed  as  the  stars 
of  the  heavens,  and  as  the  sand  which  is  upon 
the  seashore;  and  thy  seed  shall  possess  the  gate 
of  his  enemies." 

To-day  the  Jews  are  scattered  over  every  na- 
tion on  earth.  They  are,  indeed,  a  "peculiar 
people,"  in  that,  although  they  have  been  min- 
124 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  125 

gling  with  all  other  races  of  people,  they  remain 
Jews,  retain  their  personality,  as  a  people,  and 
all  of  their  forms  and  customs,  both  religiously 
and  socially,  almost  without  a  sign  of  a  change. 
You  may  travel  to  the  furthermost  parts  of  the 
earth:  you  may  sail  over  all  the  seas;  you  may 
enter  the  largest  cities;  you  may  stop  in  the 
smaller  towns  of  every  nation  and  tribe,  and 
there  you  will  find  the  Jews,  busily  engaged  in 
their  promised  "possession  of  the  gates  of  their 
enemies."  And  now  a  thinking  man  is  bound 
to  believe  that  they  have  carried  all  of  the  better 
portion  of  the  goods  of  all  other  people  out  of 
those  "gates;"  for  to-day  we  see  a  Jew  at  the 
head  of  the  banks  of  England,  France,  Ger- 
many, Russia,  Italy,  Spain,  Turkey,  and  almost 
all  other  nations;  while  here  in  the  United  States, 
our  President  has  been  forced  to  apply  to  the 
Jews  to  uphold  our  tottering  treasury  and  stand 
guard  over  it,  in  order  to  allow  it  to  continue 
in  business  at  all.  Not  only  do  we  find  them  at 
the  head  of  the  banks  of  all  nations,  but,  more 
than  this,  we  find  them  at  the  head  of  almost  all 
of  our  banks,  of  all  kinds,  and  in  all  nations. 

And,  what  is  more  serious,  we  find  that  it  is 
the  cunning  brain  of  the  Jew  which  has  created 
and  fostered  the  present  banking  systems  of  all 
nations,  so  artfully  arranged,  and  so  consum- 


126  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

mately  carried  out,  that  all  the  people  of  the 
world  are  paying  heavy  tribute  to  those  same 
Jews,  in  interest  and  exchange,  without  know- 
ing that  they  are  doing  so. 

The  stupidity  of  the  people,  on  this  point,  is 
so  great  that  even  Bob  Ingersoll  must  admit 
that  nothing  short  of  the  will  of  an  all-powerful 
God  could  manage  to  keep  the  great  masses  of 
our  people  from  awakening  from  the  sleep  that 
has  fallen  over  them,  financially,  and  throwing 
off  the  yoke  of  this  servitude. 

Two  words  alone  are  needed  to  explain  this 
extraordinary  condition  of  affairs,  and  the}'  are 
''Interest"  and  "Usury."  By  a  concerted  cun- 
ning, peculiar  to  themselves,  the  Jews  have  con- 
trived to  get  all  the  people  of  the  world  to  adopt 
a  banking  system  that  allows  the  Jews  to  receive 
the  money  of  the  world  as  deposits,  and  then 
loan  it  out  to  the  world  at  a  good  interest,  on 
their  own  account,  which  interest  goes  into  the 
Jews'  vaults,  as  clear  profits.  Every  man  who 
deposits  money  in  a  bank  regularly,  is  sure  to 
want  to  borrow  some  from  the  bank  at  times, 
and  here  is  where  the  Jew  catches  his  victim. 
While  the  Jew  has  had  the  use  of  the  money  of 
the  depositor  free  of  charge  all  along,  as  soon 
as  the  depositor  happens  to  need  a  little  money 
he  is  forced  to  pay  the  Jew  a  full  round  interest, 


THE   MODERN   BANKER  127 

and  give  him  ample  security,  in  order  to  get  it. 
In  this  way,  all  men  who  handle  much  money 
are  forced  into  this  net  of  the  wily  Jews,  and 
are  compelled  to  pay  tribute  to  the  cunning  and 
cupidity  of  "God's  peculiar  people."  This 
banking  system  was  not  created  in  a  day,  nor 
in  a  year.  It  was  created  by  the  Jew  a  little  at 
a  time,  and  has  been  fostered  by  him  during 
many  years.  The  people  have  been  played 
upon,  and  taught  that  the  theories  of  finance 
are  very  intricate,  and  that  it  takes  a  lifetime  to 
understand  them,  while,  really,  nothing  could 
be  simpler  than  this  plan  of  the  Jews  to  gain 
tribute  from  the  people  of  the  world.  A  Jew 
opens  up  a  vault  and  offers  to  take  care  of  his 
neighbors'  money  free  of  charge.  His  unthink- 
ing neighbors  have  no  really  safe  place  to  keep 
it,  so  they  gladly  turn  it  over  to  the  Jew,  who, 
in  turn,  loans  out  a  large  part  of  it  to  some 
others  of  his  neighbors,  who  happen  to  want  to 
borrow.  He  always  keeps  a  safe  percentage  of 
it  on  hand,  so  that  he  can  deliver  any  amount 
called  for  by  any  depositor,  at  any  time.  He 
soon  ascertains  what  his  "average  deposits"  are, 
and  then  he  learns  how  much  his  "average 
withdrawals"  are,  so  he  soon  knows  just  how 
much  of  his  neighbors'  money  he  can  keep 
loaned  out  all  the  time.  If  he  can  secure  ten 


128  THE   MODERN   BANKER 

per  cent  interest  per  annum,  in  ten  years  he  will 
have  a  total  equaling  the  amount  he  has  used, 
to  say  nothing  of  compound  interest.  His  un- 
thinking neighbor  has  received  his  money  from 
time  to  time,  as  he  needed  it,  and  he  sees  no 
reason  why  he  should  complain,  so  the  Jew 
grows  wealthy  and  is  credited  with  being  a 
"great  financier."  But  this  continual  drain  on 
every  country  on  earth,  has  now  been  going  on 
so  long  that  the  Jew  now  finds  himself  the 
owner  of  more  solid  cash  than  all  the  rest  of  the 
world  together.  Not  satisfied  with  all  this,  the 
Jews  have  organized,  are  buying  up  legislators, 
passing  laws  and  creating  conditions  all  favora- 
ble to  themselves.  They  see  that  as  the}'  create 
a  scarcity  of  money,  men  will  give  more  of  the 
products  of  human  skill  and  labor  for  it.  They 
are  now  the  practical  owners  of  most  of  the 
money  in  the  world,  so  they  are  making  "dear 
money"  and  "cheap  labor,"  at  an  astonishing 
rate. 

Gold  and  silver  have  been  the  only  money,  of 
final  redemption,  for  man}'  ages.  The  Jews 
saw  that  by  demonetizing  silver  they  would 
double  the  value  of  gold.  So  they  have  been 
hoarding  gold  for  many  years,  and  have,  within 
the  last  half  century  or  so,  succeeded  in  the 
complete  demonetization  of  silver  in  all  of  the 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  1 29 

leading  nations  of  the  world.  The  consequences 
have  been  that  the  Jew's  gold  has  doubled  in 
value,  and  he  can  now  buy  twice  as  much  hu- 
man comforts  and  human  power  with  his  gold, 
as  he  could  have  done  before. 

And  the  most  astonishing  fact  of  all  is,  that 
the  people  have  always  had  it  in  their  power 
to  defeat  the  schemes  of  the  Jews  in  this  matter, 
by  voting  down  his  schemes,  but  they  have 
never  done  so.  In  fact,  they  have  never  taken 
the  trouble  to  inform  themselves  as  to  what  the 
Jew  was  really  up  to.  A  few  have,  but  it  was 
such  a  sly  trick  that  they  have  kept  their  mouths 
shut,  and  have  gone  into  the  banking  business 
on  their  own  account.  It  seemed  to  them  that 
it  was  a  much  more  desirable  thing  to  take  ad- 
vantage of  the  Jew's  shrewdness,  and  make 
some  money  themselves,  than  it  was  to  expose 
the  trick  to  their  fellow  men,  and  have  the  Jew 
kicked  out.  Of  course  that  was  not  a  very 
patriotic  way  to  look  at  the  matter — but  then, 
no  one  has  ever  accused  our  bankers  of  being 
overly  patriotic.  They  have  patterned  after  the 
Jews,  in  more  ways  than  one. 

And  it  has  come  to  pass  that  those  bankers, 
who  have  sprung  from  our  own  people,  are  now 
joining  hands  with  the  Jews  in  their  efforts  to 
completely  subjugate  the  rest  of  the  world. 


I3O  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

They  have  identified  their  interests  with  those  of 
the  Jews,  and  we  now  find  them  working,  neck 
and  neck,  with  "God's  peculiar  people,"  all 
trying  to  reduce  the  supply  of  real  money  more, 
and  increase  the  amount  of  labor  and  skill  that 
it  takes  to  get  it, — except  through  the  banking 
channel.  In  fact,  we  see  those  of  our  own  flesh 
and  blood — for  the  Jew  remains  a  Jew  forever 
— now  going  to  the  Jew  for  their  instructions 
as  to  the  best  way  to  accomplish  their  purposes. 
To  all  intents  and  purposes,  we  might  just  as 
well  concede  that  all  bankers  are  Jews  in  this 
respect,  for  they  all  work  on  Jewish  methods 
now. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

AT  the  next  stockholders'  meeting  of  the 
banks,  Henry  reported  the  following  results: 
Deposits, $17, 000,000;  loans  and  discounts, $17,- 
500,000  at  7  per  cent;  short-time  brokerage, 
$500,000  clear  profits,  above  all  expenses  of  the 
bank;  diamond  brokerage,  $500,000  clear,  or 
a  total  profit  of  $2,225,000  clear,  in  one  year. 

Mr.  Lyman  reported:  Deposits,  $1,800,000; 
loans  and  discounts,  $1,450,000  at  7  per  cent; 
short-time  brokerage,  $50,000  above  all  ex- 
penses of  the  bank;  profits  from  the  lobby 
fund  only  $350,000,  or  a  total  of  about  $500,000, 
making  a  total  profit  for  the  partnership  of  $2,- 
725,000  clear  in  one  year.  They  then  increased 
the  capital  stock  of  the  New  York  bank  to  $7,- 
500,000,  voted  themselves  a  salary  of  $600,000 
each  for  the  next  year,  for  the  old  bank,  and 
$50,000  each,  for  the  new  one.  It  was  evident 
that  Mr.  Lyman  was  feeling  blue.  But  he  felt 
that  it  was  incumbent  on  him  to  explain  why 
his  profits  from  the  lobby  fund  had  fallen  so  far 
short  of  his  expectations,  so  he  said:  "Green 

131 


132  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

proved  to  be  a  very  expensive  blunder.  It  was 
entirely  his  fault  that  your  brother  was  enabled 
to  expose  our  methods  and  ruin  the  business  for 
a  time.  As  soon  as  the  batiks  heard  of  this  ex- 
posure, we  lost  over  half  of  our  membership  of 
the  lobby,  and  the  rest  of  the  banks  became 
very  cautious.  It  is  like  pulling  eye-teeth  to 
get  any  funds  out  of  them  now,  and  I  have  been 
compelled  to  call  off  the  fight  against  the  green- 
backs, for  a  time." 

So  Colonel  Hunt's  speech  had  had  some  effect, 
anyway. 

At  every  session  of  Congress  since  that  time 
this  unholy  fight  of  the  bankers  on  the  people's 
money  has  been  renewed.  John  Sherman  led  it, 
while  the  Republicans  were  in  power,  and  every 
hair  on  his  hoary  head  could  be  counted  with 
a  service  for  the  money-lords.  He  started  out 
"poor  but  honest,"  and  by  untiring  efforts  he  is 
now  a  millionaire — the  owner  of  millions  that 
were  paid  to  him  for  fighting  the  greenbacks. 

When  Cleveland  was  elected,  Sherman's 
mantle  fell  on  his  broad  shoulders  and  no  man 
has  ever  been  more  untiring  in  the  service  of 
his  masters.  The  entire  time  of  the  present  ad- 
ministration has  thus  been  employed.  Every 
message,  every  letter,every  appointment,  every 
bond-issue,  every  act  of  Congress  which  has 


BANKER  133 

touched  financial  questions,  has  been  in  the  inter- 
ests of  the  bankers  and  money-lords  and  against 
the  best  interests  of  the  masses.  No  man  can 
point  out  a  single  act  to  the  contrary.  A  very 
few  years  ago  the  ex-sheriff  of  Buffalo  was  a  poor 
man.  To-day  he  is  the  possessor  of  millions,and 
it  is  now  in  order  for  some  of  his  friends  to  ex- 
plain where  he  got  them.  If  Morgan  is  not  his 
New  York  partner,  it  is  time  the  fact  was  pro- 
claimed. It  is  said  that  the  laborer  is  worthy  of 
his  hire;  so,  if  Grover  Cleveland  has  not  been 
well  paid  for  his  services  in  behalf  of  the  bankers 
and  money-lords,  then  he  is  the  biggest  fool 
mentioned  in  all  the  annals  of  mankind. 

But  with  all  of  this  great  opposition, the  green- 
backs are  still  in  existence — the  last  vestige  of 
the  people's  money — the  only  money  in  exis- 
tence to-day  which  the  Shylocks  cannot  corner 
and  control  in  their  own  interests.  And  woe 
be  unto  this  fair  land  of  ours  if  the  people  suf- 
fer themselves  to  be  robbed  of  it! 

In  the  course  of  the  passing  years,  Colonel 
Hunt  found  himself  the  father  of  an  interesting 
family, which  had  had  the  happy  effect  of  draw- 
ing him  and  his  wife  closer  together  in  every 
way.  Two  lovely  boys,  each  named  after  their 
grandfathers,  with  two  sweet  little  girls,  each 
bearing  the  name  of  one  of  their  grandmothers, 


134  THI5   MODERN    BANKER 

were  the  pride  and  delight  of  their  parents' 
hearts. 

Colonel  Hunt  had  been  re-elected  to  his  seat 
in  Congress  so  many  times  that  it  seemed  to  him 
that  Washington  was  almost  home — although  he 
never  saw  the  time  that  the  old  homestead  in 
Missouri,  for  which  he  had  such  a  struggle 
with  his  brother  in  his  earlier  life,  was  not  the 
dearest  spot  on  earth  to  him.  He  and  his  wife 
prided  themselves  on  this  farm,  and  lavished 
every  care  and  attention  that  was  necessary  to 
keep  it  in  first-class  condition  in  every  way. 
Fine  blooded  stock  of  all  kinds  were  bred  here 
under  the  management  of  an  excellent  tenant 
who  had  charge  of  it  while  its  owners  were 
away  in  Washington, and  they  spent  the  happiest 
days  of  their  lives  on  the  farm,  each  year, 
watching  their  children  gamboling  on  the  green, 
under  the  careful  inspection  of  Pompey — whose 
chief  delight  lay  in  looking  after  them. 

Pompey  had  become  quite  a  character  during 
those  years,  for  he  had  been  with  the  family  at 
Washington,  where  he  was  not  only  a  faithful 
servant,  but  where  he  had  proven  himself  to  be 
a  valuable  watch-dog,  in  regard  to  the  actions 
of  the  other  servants.  He  had  listened  and 
"took  notes"  all  along,  and  now  the  man  who 
bought  Pompey  for  a  fool,  would  have  lost  his 
money. 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  135 

The  old  people  were  jogging  along  content- 
edly, for  after  they  succeeded  in  paying  off  the 
notes  given  to  Henry,  they  had  been  able  to 
make  a  living  by  renting  their  lands  and  raising 
stock,  without  much  worry.  They  were  getting 
a  little  feeble,  but  their  kind  old  eyes  always 
had  a  welcome  for  Colonel  Hunt  and  his  family 
which  seemed  to  be  very  delightful  to  all  parties. 

Henry's  name  was  seldom  mentioned  between 
them.  The  old  wound  was  healing,  slowly, 
under  the  effects  of  passing  years,  but  it  had 
left  an  aching  void  in  their  hearts,  which  was 
still  sore;  so  the  subject  had  been  tabooed  and 
was  seldom  mentioned.  Once  in  a  while  it 
was  impossible  to  keep  Pompey  from  expressing 
his  feelings  on  this  subject,  but,  usually,  the 
matter  was  never  mentioned,  even  for  months 
at  a  time. 

Henry  Hunt  had  spent  a  life  of  wealth,  but 
his  family  had  never  been  allowed  the  pleas- 
ures of  luxury.  He  had  always  dealt  out  the 
necessities  of  life  to  them  with  a  miser's  hand, 
although  his  pride  had  caused  him  to  spend 
enough  to  keep  up  appearances,  at  least.  Cora 
was  now  the  mother  of  three  children,  two  boys, 
who  were  named  after  two  English  lords — which 
class  was  greatly  honored  by  Henry — and  one 
girl,  Victoria,  named,  of  course,  for  the  queen 
of  England. 


136  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

With  all  of  his  miserly  ideas,  Henry  had  sev- 
eral hobbies,  all  tending  towards  a  monarchical 
form  of  government  for  the  United  States,  under 
which  he  hoped  to  purchase  a  title  and  be  ac- 
cepted as  one  of  the  nobility.  This  being  the 
case,  it  is  easy  to  understand  why  he  named  his 
children  after  the  English  nobility. 

However  much  it  may  have  been  gilded  be- 
fore company,  life  in  the  New  York  mansion 
had  never  been  pleasant  to  contemplate,  in  pri- 
vate. Cora  had  become  a  querulous,  quick- 
tempered, hasty,  exacting  woman,  and  Henry 
had  positively  refused  to  gratify  many  of  her 
whims.  She  seemed  to  have  but  little  Jove  for 
her  children,  who  were  kept  under  the  guard  of 
a  governess,  a  nurse  or  a  private,  tutor,  in  order 
to  keep  them  out  of  her  way.  In  spite  of  her 
wealth, she  had  never  been  able  to  enter  the  best 
society  of  New  York, and  it  had  always  rankled 
in  her  heart  that  her  sister  Mamie  had  been  ac- 
cepted as  one  of  the  undisputed  leaders  in 
Washington  society.  It  is  true  that  Cora  had 
been  welcomed  by  many  of  the  millionaire  fami- 
lies of  the  city,  but  her  own  good  sense  had 
proved  to  her  that  she  was  only  received  by  the 
wealthy  Jews  and  speculators  of  Wall  Street, 
simply  because  it  was  the  interests  of  those  peo- 
ple to  receive  the  wife  of  a  great  banker  that 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  137 

had  caused  them  to  open  their  doors  to  her. 
She  had  long  since  become  disgusted  with  the 
shallowness  and  fickleness  of  that  society.  She 
had  found  that  it  was  all  vanity  and  the  vanity 
of  vanities.  She  knew  that  it  was  an  article  that 
was  purchasable, and  controlled  alone  by  the  size 
of  the  applicant's  purse, and  she  often  found  her- 
self longing  for  some  little  real  human  sympathy 
and  love,  all  of  which  seemed  to  have  been  de- 
nied to  her.  Of  course  she  could  read  novels 
and  go  to  the  theater  and  to  entertainments  of 
various  kinds,  many  of  which  she  did  attend, 
but  these  things  grew  monotonous  after  a  time. 
She  had  a  proud  spirit,  a  good  conception  of 
things  in  general,  and  was  by  no  means  a  stupid 
woman.  She  had  accepted  the  painful  parting 
with  her  parents  and  sister,  simply  because  she 
found  that  it  was  impossible  for  her  to  live  in 
amicable  relations  with  them,  without  very 
severe  censure  from  Henry.  Taken  all  in  all, 
she  had  been  a  very  suitable  wife  for  Henry. 
She  had  not  loved  him  enough  to  demand  much 
attention  from  him  and  he  had  been  too  busy  to 
expect  much  attention  from  her. 

Henry  Hunt  had  had  two  very  severe  trials 
on  his  faith  and  worship  of  the  English  nobility. 
First  a  certain  :'Lord  Houghton"  had  honored 
him  with  several  visits  while  in  New  York,  at 


138  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

all  of  which  Henry  had  spared  no  expense  in 
lavish  entertainment,  and  the  two  had  become 
fast  friends.  After  a  time  my  lord  succeeded 
in  borrowing  some  $10,000  from  Henry,  on  his 
mere  note  of  hand, and  after  my  lord  had  left  for 
parts  unknown,  Henry  found  that  no  less  than 
seven  rich  "suckers"  had  been  taken  in  by  the 
same  game.  Thus  we  see  that  an  English 
"nobleman"  need  not  go  hungry  in  New  York. 
There  are  plenty  of  people  there  who  will  honor 
him,  if  he  will  condescend  to  rob  them.  Such 
is  life.  Then,  when  my  lord,  the  Duke  of  Marl- 
borough,  came  over  after  the  Vanderbilt  millions 
and  girl,  Henry  was  very  much  astonished 
to  find  that  my  lord  did  not  care  to  call  on  a 
mere  banker  at  all.  This  was  a  great  shock  to 
him,  but  it  gave  Henry  the  idea  of  advocating 
a  monarchical  form  of  government  for  this  coun- 
try, under  which  he  would  be  able  to  buy  a  title 
that  would  admit  him  to  the  homes  of  all  the 
nobles  of  Europe.  Hence  his  opposition  to  every 
act  of  this  people  under  a  republican  rule. 

Without  going  into  minute  details,  we  must 
attend  the  next  five  annual  meetings  of  the 
stockholders  of  our  two  banks.  The  first  one 
showed  the  following:  Deposits,  $22,500,000 
in  the  New  York  bank,  with  loans  of  $22,500,- 
ooo  at  seven  per  cent;  short-time  brokerage, 


TMR  MODERN   BANKER  139 

$750,000  above  all  expenses  of  the  bank;  dia- 
mond brokerage,  $750,000  clear  profits,  making 
a  total  of  $3,000,000  as  clear  profits  for  this 
bank,  for  this  year. 

The  Washington  bank  reported:  Deposits, 
$2,500,000;  loans,  $2,000,000  at  7  per  cent; 
short  time  brokerage  (which  means  money 
loaned  on  less  than  30  days'  time,  at  an  exceed- 
ingly high  rate  of  interest),  $100,000;  lobby 
profits, $260,000,  or  a  total  of  $500,000  in  profits. 
The  capital  of  the  New  York  bank  was  then 
raised  to  $10,000,000,  while  that  at  Washington 
was  increased  to  $500,000.  The  salaries  were 
raised  to  $1,000,000  for  the  New  York  bank  and 
$100,000  each  for  the  other. 

The  next  report  showed  the  following  results: 

New  York:  Deposits,  $35,000,000;  loans$33,- 
750,000  at  7  per  cent ;  short-time  brokerage, 
$1,000,000  clear;  diamond  brokerage,  $1,000,- 
ooo  clear;  total  profits  for  the  year,  $4,360,000. 
Salaries  voted,  $1,250,000  each. 

Washington:  Deposits,  $4,000,000;  loans, 
$3,750,000  at  7  per  cent;  brokerage,  $150,000 
clear;  lobby,  $120,000,  making  a  total  of  $500,- 
ooo  clear  profits  this  year. 

Total  profits  for  the  partnership,  $4,860,000. 
The  stock  of  the  New  York  bank  was  made 
$15,000,000. 


THE  MODERN   BANKER 

The  next  year  gives  this  result: 

New  York:  Profits  on  $45, 000,000 equal  $2,- 
750,000  at  6  per  cent,  and  the  two  brokerages 
paid  $1,250,000  each,  making  a  total  of  $5,250,- 
ooo,  as  clear  profits  this  year. 

Washington :  Deposits,$5, 500,000;  loans,  $5,- 
110,000 at 6 per  cent;  brokerage, $200,000  clear; 
lobby,  $250,000,  making  a  total  of  $750,000 
profits  this  year. 

Total  profits  of  the  partnership  this  year,  $6,- 
000,000. 

The  stock  of  the  New  York  bank  was  made 
$20,000,000  and  that  of  the  Washington  bank 
was  raised  to  $1,000,000,  and  there  was  money 
left  to  throw  at  the  birds. 

Friend,  go  on  and  make  the  calculation.  I 
cannot  do  it,  for  it  makes  my  heart  ache.  But 
do  not  take  my  word  for  it;  make  the  figures 
for  yourself.  Let  Mr.  Lyman  resign  from  the 
Washington  lobby  and  burn  the  pawnshops  up, 
and  then  make  some  more  figures.  The  result 
will  surprise  you.  Take  the  published  statements 
of  your  little  banks  around  you,  and  figure  on 
them.  This  will  explain  to  you  why  the  banker 
comes  smilingly  down  at  nine  o'clock, and  walks 
leisurely  back  at  three  o'clock,  and  still  lives  on 
the  fat  of  the  land;  while  you  are  forced  to  toil 
from  daylight  until  dark  for  a  mere  living — and 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  14! 

getting  in  debt  at  that,  if  you  are  not  particular. 

Take  the  wheels  out  of  your  head,  my  dear  old 
business  man,  machinist,  carpenter,  laboring 
man,  or  farmer.  Cut  the  string  }7our  banker  is 
pulling  on  your  thinking  machine,  and  make  a 
few  figures  for  your  own  benefit.  Get  a  barber 
to  cut  the  wool  out  of  your  eyes,  so  that  you  can 
see  and  think  a  little  bit  about  your  own  condi- 
tion. Wake  up!  The  banker  has  a  mortgage 
on  you  and  your  prosperity,  and  it  behooves 
you  to  get  to  work.  He  has  already  made  slaves 
and  serfs  out  of  millions  of  your  fellowmen, 
and  he  is  working  the  same  game  on  you. 

Reader,  this  picture  is  not  overdrawn. 
There  are  hundreds  of  banks  in  these  United 
States,  whose  rapid  rise  ought  to  put  you  to 
seriously  thinking  about  this  matter.  Look  at 
the  men  who,  twenty  years  ago,  were  running 
small  banks  in  our  larger  cities!  To-day  they 
are  millionaires,  many  times  over.  The  little 
one-story  bank  building  has  turned  into  a  sky- 
scraper, and  the  little  $100,000  capital  stock  of 
the  bank  has  risen  to  the  mighty  $100,000,000. 
Some  one  owns  this  money — for  every  dollar 
of  it  is  as  good  as  cash,  almost,  for  the  banker 
is  not  taking  many  chances.  Some  one  has  lost 
all  of  this  money.  There  is  a  trick,  somewhere. 
We  have  been  turned  into  a  nation  of  borrowers, 


142  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

by  the  turn  of  some  card  that  we  have  not  un- 
derstood. 

America !  That  name  has  ever  been  a  synonym 
of  great  prosperity,  and  all  of  its  citizens  ought 
to  be  able  to  shout  out  its  glories  to  all  comers 
now. 

But  stop!  What  is  that  roar  that  we  hear? 
Oh,  God!  It  is  the  mutterings  of  discontent.  It 
is  the  angry  roar  of  disappointment.  It  is  the 
pleadings  of  the  poor  for  work.  It  is  the  beg- 
ging of  the  hungry  for  food.  It  is  the  sighing 
of  the  wretched  for  relief. 

Millions  of  your  fellowmen  are  anxiously  in- 
quiring why  all  of  these  things  should  come  to 
pass,  in  the  midst  of  the  greatest  crops, the  most 
astonishing  inventions  and  the  most  unheard-of 
production  the  world  ever  saw.  Want  sitting 
in  Plenty's  lap.  Riot  nestling  on  the  bosom  of 
Peace.  Poverty  pleading  with  Wealth.  Reader, 
what  on  earth  does  it  all  mean?  It  is  time  that 
you  were  putting  on  your  studying  cap. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

TEN  years  have  passed  away.  The  capital 
stock  of  the  bank  of  Andrew  J.  Lyman  &  Co., 
of  New  York,  is  now  $50,000,000,  while  that 
of  their  branch  bank  at  Washington  is  $10,000,- 
ooo.  Their  average  deposits  are  now  about 
$225,000,000,  while  their  loans  average  about 
$200,000,000  at  4  per  cent  interest  per  annum. 
Their  short-time  brokerage  pays  them  about 
$6,000,000  per  annum,  clear,  above  all  expenses 
of  the  bank,  while  their  diamond  brokerage 
pays  about  $6,000,000  clear  profits.  This  gives 
each  of  the  partners  an  annual  income  of  about 
$10,000,000  each,  and  Henry  actually  smiles 
as  he  thinks  of  that  annual  joke  about  being 
president  of  these  United  States,  at  the  insignifi- 
cant salary  of  $50,000  per  annum.  It  is  the  first 
real  smile  that  he  has  enjoyed  for  many  months. 
Usually  his  brows  are  contracted  over  some 
question  involving  millions.  This  has  become 
such  a  habit  with  him  that  the  skin  on  his  fore- 
head has  turned  into  a  complete  set  of  deep 
wrinkles,  which  he  has  the  habit  of  changing, 
143 


144  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

first  up  and  down  and  then  crossways,  accord- 
ing to  the  news  that  he  has  received.  He  is  a 
terror  to  his  help  in  the  bank,  and  his  wife  and 
boy  are  as  afraid  of  him  as  they  would  be  of  the 
evil  one  himself.  He  has  gotten  into  the  habit 
of  scolding  every  one  he  comes  in  contact  with, 
and  the  mere  mention  of  the  name  of  one  of  his 
relatives  is  enough  to  throw  him  into  such  a 
rage  that  it  will  take  him  half  an  hour  to  get 
out  of  it. 

Mr.  Lyman  is  in  Europe,  figuring  on  a  big 
war  loan  to  one  of  two  belligerent  nations, whose 
rulers  have  some  little  grievance  or  other  against 
each  other.  He  has  just  cabled  Henry  that  he 
has  agreed  to  carry  some  $50,000,000  in  five- 
per-cents,  fifty  years,  and  Henry  is  unusually 
happy  over  it.  The  dogs  of  war  will  now  be 
turned  loose,  and  thousands  will  be  slain,  simply 
because  a  banker  has  seen  a  chance  to  make  a 
profit  out  of  the  awful  slaughter,  and  some  little 
ruler  has  been  snubbed  by  some  other  little  ruler, 
both  of  whom  would  be  afraid  to  attempt  to  set- 
tle the  matter  as  men  usually  do.  And  when 
thousands  have  been  slain,  and  the  war  has 
ceased,  then  millions  of  serfs  will  have  to  work 
for  the  interest  on  these  same  bonds,  while  their 
hearts  are  sore  over  the  loss  of  many  dear  ones, 
who  were  murdered  that  this  banker  might 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  145 

make  his  unholy  gains.     But   why   complain? 
Such  is  life. 

When  Mr.  Lyman  returned,  he  was  feeling 
jubilant.  He  felt  ready  to  commence  his  war 
on  the  people  of  the  United  States  again,  now 
that  he  had  so  successfully  engineered  a  war  in 
Europe.  "Well,  Henry,"  he  said,  "what  do 
you  say  to  going  after  those  greenbacks  again  ? 
We  have  a  new  Democratic  Congress,  with  a 
President  that  is  with  us,  teeth  and  toe-nails." 
"It  is  now  or  never,  sir,  in  my  opinion." 
"So  I  think.  In  order  to  accomplish  our  pur- 
pose, we  must  make  hard  times,  take  a  lot  of 
these  greenbacks,  withdraw  a  lot  of  that  'gold 
reserve'  and  force  the  government  to  issue 
bonds,  with  which  to  redeem  the  greenbacks, 
in  order  to  get  them  out  of  the  way  and  save  the 
gold  that  is  now  in  the  treasury.  I  have  seen  the 
new  President  and  his  Secretary, and  feel  assured 
they  will  never  offer  silver  for  these  notes, for,  if 
they  did, then  our  game  would  be  blocked.  This 
would  throw  the  country  on  a  silver  basis  and 
kill  all  of  our  schemes  at  once.  But  since  I  suc- 
ceeded in  demonetizing  silver  so  easily,  I  have 
no  doubt  that  I  shall  be  able  to  force  the  Govern- 
ment to  call  in  the  greenbacks,  and  let  us  issue 
bank-notes  in  their  place.  I  know  that  a  panic 
is  a  bad  thing  for  banks,  if  it  goes  too  far,  but  I 


146  THE   MODERN    BANKER 

will  be  sure  to  be  able  to  stop  it  before  it  reaches 
New  York.  I  do  not  care  if  I  do  burst  a  few  of 
the  smaller  banks,  in  the  interior.  There  are 
too  many  of  that  class  of  banks  anyway.  Let 
the  people  learn  to  come  here  for  their  money, 
and  make  their  deposits  here.  I  have  prepared 
a  circular,  which  I  wish  to  submit  to  you.  Read 
it." 

"DEAR  SIR: — The  interests  of  National  Bank- 
ers require  immediate  financial  legislation  by 
Congress.  Silver,SilverCertificatesand  Treasury 
Notes  must  be  retired  and  National  Bank  Notes, 
upon  a  Gold  basis,  made  the  ONLY  MONEY. 
This  will  require  the  authorization  of  from  $500,- 
000,000  to  $1,000,000,000  of  new  bonds,  as  a 
basis  of  circulation.  You  will  at  once  retire 
one-third  of  your  circulation  and  call  in  one-half 
of  your  loans.  Be  careful  to  make  a  money- 
stringency  felt  among  your  patrons,  especially 
among  influential  business  men.  Advocate  an 
extra  session  of  Congress  for  the  repeal  of  the 
purchase  clause  of  the  Sherman  law,  and  act 
with  other  banks  of  your  city  in  securing  a  large 
petition  to  Congress  for  its  unconditional  repeal, 
per  accompanying  form.  Use  personal  influence 
with  your  Congressman ;  particularly,  let  your 
wishes  be  known  to  your  Senator.  The  future 
life  of  National  Banks,  as  fixed  and  safe  invest- 
ments, depends  upon  your  immediate  action,  as 
there  is  an  increasing  sentiment  in  favor  of 
Governmental  legal-tender  notes  and  Free  Sil- 
ver Coinage.'1'1 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  147 

"I  intend  to  have  our  American  Bankers'  As- 
sociation sign  this  circular,  and  I  will  mail  it 
to  every  National  Bank  on  our  lists  at  once." 

The  reader  doubtless  remembers  the  effect  of 
this  famous  circular,  for  it  caused  the  panic  of 
1893.  The  bankers  were  so  eager  to  obey  these 
instructions  that  they  really  overdid  the  matter 
of  making  "a  money-stringency  felt,"  for  they 
caused  millions  to  make  a  rush  on  the  banks, 
which  came  very  near  breaking  every  bank  in 
the  country.  Mr.  Lyman  was  compelled  to 
work  every  scheme  known  to  his  consummate 
ability,  to  keep  his  own  banks  from  failing; 
but  at  last  he  struck  the  happy  idea  of  issuing 
millions  of  dollars'  worth  of  notes, signed  by  the 
clearing  house  of  New  York  City,  which  is  com- 
posed of  all  of  its  leading  banks, and  in  this  way, 
he  succeeded  in  staying  the  curse  of  devasta- 
tion that  he  had  started  going.  Of  course  the 
people  lost  many  billions  of  dollars  of  their  hard 
earnings — but  the  purchase  clause  of  the  Sher- 
man law  was  repealed.  However,  there  was 
still  enough  manhood  in  that  Congress  to  re- 
fuse to  destroy  the  greenbacks,  which  are  now 
the  last  vestige  of  our  money  that  the  banker 
cannot  control.  Onslaught  after  onslaught  was 
repulsed,  and  at  last  the  lobbyists  were  forced 
to  retire  defeated. 


140  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

It  cost  this  nation  the  greatest  panic  the  world 
ever  saw  to  repeal  the  purchase  clause  of  the 
Sherman  law,  which  every  thinking  man  in  the 
country,  outside  of  those  influenced  by  the 
banks,  wanted  to  change  into  a  law  for  the  ab- 
solute free  coinage  of  silver,  which  had  been 
stabbed  in  1853,  and  murdered,  without  the 
knowledge  of  its  friends,  in  1873. 

When  the  author  of  this  little  book  published 
this  circular,  soon  after  the  panic  had  ceased,  it 
was  denied  by  the  bankers  of  New  York,  but  he 
stands  ready  to  prove  that  this  circular  was  is- 
sued, as  stated,  in  exactly  the  words  given 
above.  No  mere  flippant  denial  of  it  will  be 
received,  when  the  above  words  were  copied 
from  one  of  the  original  circulars,  with  this 
writer's  own  hand,  and  he  stands  ready  to  testify 
to  all  of  the  facts,  giving  all  of  the  details  ex- 
cept the  name  of  the  banker  who  kindly  let  him 
see  it,  which  the  author  is  under  a  solemn  prom- 
ise to  keep  sacred. 

But  to  any  thinking  man,  does  this  circular 
need  further  proof  than  merely  to  point  out  the 
immediate  results  of  it — the  panic? 

It  is  true  that  this  country  was  running  on 
declining  prices,  caused  by  the  demonetization 
of  silver  in  1873,  but  it  was  in  a  tolerably  pros- 
perous condition  in  1892.  Its  wonderful  resour- 


THE   MODERN   BANKER  149 

ces  had  been  able  to  keep  it  out  of  serious  finan- 
cial storms  before  that  time,  although  the  bank- 
ers had  drawn  billions  of  dollars  from  the  life- 
blood  of  its  commerce.  But  there  was  no 
outward  visible  reason  why  this  panic  should 
have  come,  just  when  it  did.  No  sensible  man 
can  be  convinced  that  it  was  not  caused  by  the 
above  circular,  once  he  thinks  of  the  matter  in 
all  of  its  bearings. 

The  calling  in  of  the  funds,  as  indicated  in 
this  circular,  caused  the  panic,  even  before  the 
purchase  clause  repeal  could  have  effected  it. 
It  is  true  this  repeal  caused  the  people  to  awake 
to  the  fact  that  silver  had  been  demonetized, and 
this  aggravated  the  causes  of  the  panic,  but  the 
panic  itself  was  started  b}r  this  circular,  as  Mr. 
Lyman  desired  that  it  should  be  started,  when 
he  sent  it  out. 


CHAPTER  XV. 

AFTER  the  famous  battle  that  Colonel  Hunt  led 
in  the  House  of  Representatives,  in  behalf  of 
the  greenbacks,  in  1893,  he  was  honored  as  few 
men  in  his  position  ever  were  honored  before. 
Almost  the  entire  country,  outside  of  the  banker 
and  his  influence, rose  up,  regardless  of  political 
lines,  to  do  him  honor.  His  name  was  mentioned 
freely  as  a  possible  candidate  for  the  presidency, 
and  there  could  have  been  no  man  selected  who 
would  have  been  as  universally  popular  with 
the  masses;  but  he  was  too  well  posted  to  enter- 
tain the  matter  for  a  moment.  He  knew  that  it 
was  impossible  for  any  man  to  be  elected  presi- 
dent of  the  United  States,  who  opposed  the 
banks.  He  knew  their  power  and  influence 
better  than  the  people  did,  and  he  would  not  al- 
low himself  to  lead  a  forlorn  hope.  The  truth 
of  the  matter  was  that  he  was  sadly  disappointed, 
not  at  his  own  career,  but  at  the  results  of  it. 
He  had  unselfishly  and  honestly  applied  himself 
to  his  work.  He  had  done  all  that  he  could  to 
stay  the  hand  of  the  destroyer.  He  had  fought 
the  powers  of  oppression  with  all  of  his  might  for 

150 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  15! 

twenty-six  years,  while  in  Congress.  He  had 
never  seen  the  time  when  he  would  not  have 
given  his  life,  freely,  if  by  so  doing  he  could 
have  saved  the  people  from  the  awful  destruction 
the  bankers  were  preparing  to  deal  out  to  them. 

But  he  had  been  defeated.  He  saw  that  he 
was  too  weak  to  withstand  their  onslaughts  much 
longer.  He  saw  the  time  was  near  at  hand  when 
the  people  would  be  compelled  to  arouse  them- 
selves, or  else  be  slaves. 

Colonel  Hunt  offered  a  bill  for  the  re-establish- 
ment of  the  banking  business  of  the  United 
States,  on  the  following  lines,  during  the  last 
session  of  Congress:  After  repealing  all  con 
flicting  laws,  it  gave  the  land-owners  of  every 
county,  town,  district,  city  ward,  or  other  sub- 
division of  any  city,  containing  5,000  inhabit- 
ants, the  right  to  vote  for  a  Governmental  Bank 
of  Deposit,  which  shall  be  established  by  the 
Government  of  the  United  States,  when  one 
hundred  or  more  of  the  land-owners  in  the  com 
munity  named  shall  subscribe  their  names  to  the 
stock  of  said  bank,  which  shall  vary,  according 
to  the  desire  of  the  subscribers,  from  $10,000  up 
to  $500,000,  which  stock  shall  not  amount  to 
more  than  one-tenth  of  the  actual  cash  value  of 
the  property  of  the  subscribing  stockholders, 
all  of  which  must  be  free  and  clear  from  all  en- 


152  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

cumbrances  of  any  nature  at  the  time  of  the  sub- 
scription, the  Government  to  have  a  first  lien  on 
all  of  the  property  named  to  the  amount  of  the 
subscription  made  by  its  owner,  to  secure  it  from 
all  loss  on  account  of  the  bank.  When  all  of 
this  has  been  approved  by  bonded  examiners  of 
the  Government,  then  the  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury  of  the  United  States  shall  issue  to  said 
bank  the  amount  of  its  stock,  in  either  Gold  or 
Silver  or  Treasury  notes  receivable  for  all  debts, 
dues  and  demands  in  the  United  Sates,  but 
which  shall  not  draw  interest,  and  shall  issue  a 
charter  for  same  and  turn  it  over  to  the  managers 
of  said  bank,  which  will  then  be  ready  to  begin 
business.  The  stock  of  said  bank  shall  be  duly 
recorded  in  the  mortgage  records  of  the  count}', 
and  then  held  by  the  United  States  as  a  lien  on 
each  piece  of  property  mentioned  for  the  amount 
named  against  it,  and  shall  not  be  released  until 
this  amount,  together  with  all  expenses  of  this 
transaction,  shall  have  been  paid,  in  exactly  the 
same  kind  of  money  that  the  bank  has  received 
from  the  Government,  when  a  full  release  may 
be  issued. 

This  bank,  when  so  chartered,  shall  have  the 
right  to  receive  deposits,  loan  money  on  ap- 
proved bankable  paper  and  do  a  general  bank- 
ing business;  but  after  paying  all  expenses  of 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  153 

running  the  business,  including  reasonable  sal- 
aries to  competent  managers,  clerks,  etc.,  to- 
gether with  four  per  cent  per  annum  interest  to 
all  of  the  land-owners  interested,  according  to 
the  amount  of  stock  which  they  own,  then  the 
remainder  of  all  profits  shall  be  divided  between 
all  of  the  depositors,  according  to  the  amounts 
of  their  average  deposits  during  the  year,  on  the 
basis  of  monthly  exhibits,  as  follows:  A  deposi- 
tor who  has  an  average  of  $100  in  the  bank  all 
of  the  time,  of  every  month  in  one  year,  shall 
be  entitled  to  the  same  share  as  a  depositor  who 
has  had  $1,200  in  the  bank  all  the  time  for 
one  month,  etc. 

The  Government  assumes  no  responsibility 
for  any  action  of  an}'  officer  of  the  bank,  nor 
does  it  guarantee  any  depositor  against  loss, 
but  every  depositor  shall  have  a  second  lien  on 
the  land  which  is  covered  by  the  first  lien  of  the 
Government's,  to  secure  him  against  loss  if  the 
bank  fails,  said  second  lien  to  be  subject  only  to 
the  lien  of  the  Government;  said  land  to  be  ap- 
praised by  Governmental  bonded  inspectors, 
who  shall  require  sworn  valuations  from  its  owner 
and  three  of  his  adjoining  neighbors,  when  ap- 
praised. 

Then  followed  clauses  to  prevent  fraud  and 
punish  offenders,  to  elect  officers  by  a  majority  of 


154  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

all  of  the  stock-owners,  to  assess  all  of  the  banks 
an  annual  tax  sufficiently  large  to  pa)'  the  Gov- 
ernment for  all  expenses  incurred  in  looking 
after  the  banks,  etc.,  but  which  was  in  no  case 
to  exceed  one  per  cent  per  annum  of  the  amount 
advanced  by  the  Government  to  the  bank. 

Then  followed  a  clause  opening  the  mints  of 
the  United  States  to  the  free  and  unlimited 
coinage  of  both  gold  and  silver,at  such  a  ratio  as 
may  from  time  to  time  be  required,  to  keep  the 
international,  intrinsic  value  exactly  with  the 
coinage  value.  Subsidiary  silver  coins  to  be  on 
equal  proportionate  weight  and  fineness  with 
other  silver  coins.  The  government  to  immedi- 
ately coin  all  of  the  silver  in  the  treasury,  and 
begin  recoining  all  silver  coins,  as  fast  as  they 
are  received,  into  coins  of  the  proper  weight 
and  fineness  to  keep  the  intrinsic  value  of  the 
two  metals  the  same  as  the  coinage  value,  as 
nearly  as  possible.  All  holders  of  our  present 
silver  coins  to  have  the  right  to  send  them  to 
the  mints  and  get  the  same  number  of  new  coins 
— the  Government  to  stand  all  loss,  if  any. 

Then  followed  a  clause  ordering  the  Govern- 
ment to  issue  an  amount  of  treasury  notes  equal- 
ing the  whole  amount  of  the  public  debt,  requir- 
ing the  banks  to  buy  enough  of  those  notes,  all 
along,  to  pay  off  the  public  debt  as  fast  as  it 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  155 

falls  due ;  if  gold  be  needed, then  in  gold ;  if  silver 
be  needed, then  in  silver,  or,  if  treasury  notes  be 
needed,  requiring  the  holders  of  the  bonds  to 
accept  treasury  notes  from  the  Government. 

Then  followed  a  clause  giving  to  the  debtor 
the  right  to  pay  all  debts,  dues  and  demands  he 
owes  or  may  owe,  in  either  one  of  the  kinds  of 
money  mentioned  above,  unless  the  original 
note  or  bond  calls  for  one  special  kind  of  money. 
This  privilege  was  also  given  to  the  Government, 
as  well  as  to  all  other  debtors. 

Then  'followed  a  clause  forbidding  the  Gov- 
ernment to  issue  more  than  an  amount  of  treas- 
ury notes  equaling  all  of  the  gold  and  silver 
together,  now  in  circulation,  or  thereafter  to  be 
placed  in  circulation. 

Next  came  a  clause  making  it  the  duty  of  all 
officers  inspecting  goods  for  export,  to  collect 
five  per  cent  export  duties  on  all  money  shipped 
out  of  the  United  States  to  any  foreign  nation. 

Next  came  a  clause  making  it  high  treason 
against  the  Government  to  be  guilty  of  trying  to 
increase  or  decrease  the  value  of  the  Govern- 
ment's money,  by  any  device,  trick,  scheme, 
trust,  combination  or  condition  whatsoever, 
punishable  all  the  way  from  a  small  fine,  in 
small  cases,  to  expulsion  from  the  country  in 
larger  cases.  Very  severe  punishment  was  to 


156  THE  MODERN  BANKER 

be  meted  out  to  all  bankers  who  defalcated,  or 
caused  any  depositor  or  the  Government  any 
loss  through  any  trick,  scheme,  trust,  combina- 
tion or  condition,  whatsoever. 

The  old  banks  were  given  a  reasonable  time 
to  wind  up  their  business  and  retire — although 
this  was  unnecessary,  for  they  would  find  them- 
selves without  depositors  as  soon  as  the  new 
banks  could  get  started  going. 

Every  possible  precaution  was  taken  to  prevent 
fraud.  All  possible  safeguards  were  thrown 
around  it.  This  bill  was  the  careful  thought  of 
one  who  had  spent  a  lifetime  in  studying  the 
matter,  and  it  will  certainly  pay  the  reader  to 
study  it  over  carefully.  Some  bill,  like  this, 
must  be  passed  soon  to  save  our  country  from 
the  clutches  of  our  present  grasping  bankers' 
greed. 

Colonel  Hunt's  speech  in  advocacy  of  this  bill 
was  the  master-work  of  his  life,  and  it  was  sent 
to  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  country  and  used  as 
one  of  the  strongest  arguments  of  the  times. 
Of  course  it  created  a  great  sensation,  and  no 
wonder,  for  here  are  a  few  excerpts  from  it: 

"Mr.  Speaker: — The  political  events  of  the 
last  few  years  have  opened  the  eyes  of  this 
people  to  the  fact  that  they  have  been  mer- 
cilessly robbed,  through  the  acts  of  this 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  157 

Congress.  Yes,  sir,  I  repeat  it!  Robbed  in 
cold  blood,  by  those  they  have  trusted  and 
whose  duty  it  was  to  protect  them.  Look, 
sir,  at  the  Senator  from  Ohio  (Sherman)  and 
those  of  his  financial  clique — every  one  of  them 
millionaires.  They  demonetized  silver  and  have 
received  their  reward.-  They  have  sold  their 
constituents  for  a  price,  and  now  have  the  blood 
money  in  their  possession.  Their  price  was 
high,  but  the  money-lords  could  well  afford  to 
pay  it.  And  then,  sir,  look  at  the  fact  that  those 
same  money-lords  have  made  the  common  peo- 
ple believe  that  Sherman  was  a  statesman — by 
using  the  columns  of  a  partisan  press, which  was 
forced  to  laud  him  up  to  the  skies,  to  keep  the 
people  from  learning  the  real  facts  and  crushing 
both  him  and  his  press  supporters,  for  their 
treachery.  But  now  a  day  of  reckoning  is  at 
hand. 

"Then  cast  your  eyes  on  the  ex-sheriff  from 
Buffalo!  Unknown,  unnoted  and  unsung,  he 
sprang  from  obscurity  into  prominence,  simply 
because  he  espoused  the  cause  of  Wall  Street, 
against  the  people,  and  has  had  the  backbone 
to  deliver  the  goods.  Yes,  sir,  I  repeat  it! 
Cleveland  has  delivered  us  over  to  our  enemies 
— and  is  to-day  a  millionaire,  beloved  of  all  the 
gold-bugs, and  a  saint  and  an  angel  in  the  eyes 


158  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

of  the  Shylocks.  Private  bond-contracts  in  a 
public  office!  Ye  gods!  A  self-acknowledged 
traitor,  who  accepted  the  nomination  on  a  bi- 
metallic platform  and  then  ran  our  government 
on  a  gold  basis — obtaining  a  large  amount  of 
the  yellow  metal  as  his  part  of  the  vicarious  sac- 
rifice. Cleveland,  the  man  who  has  insisted  on 
paying  out  gold  for  silver  certificates  and  issuing 
more  bonds  for  more  gold  to  pay  out  for  other 
silver  certificates,  all  positively  against  all  law 
and  all  equity,  simply  because  the  bankers  have 
demanded  a  billion  dollars1  worth  of  bonds,  to 
be  used  as  a  banking  basis.  Ah!  what  a  servant 
is  this!  Ever  ready  to  obey  the  behests  of  his 
masters,  even  though  he  has  to  perjure  his  soul 
by  turning  traitor  to  his  oath  of"  high  office — 
supposed  to  be  the  most  sacred  oath  known  to 
our  language.  And  had  we  a  Congress  of  Wash- 
ingtons,  Jeffersons,  Henrys,  Jacksons,  Calhouns, 
Clays  and  Lincolns,  he  would  be  impeached 
and  in  prison  before  the  sun  sets  this  day. 

"It  is  with  a  feeling  of  horror  that  I  refer  to 
the  present  Secretary  of  the  Treasury.  A  sad- 
ness comes  creeping  over  me,  as  1  consider  his 
poor  predicament — his  conscience  a  seething 
mass  of  the  flames  of  torment, his  poor  trembling 
soul  shuddering  on  the  brink  of  the  inevitable 
chasm  of  public  condemnation,  after  a  long  life 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  159 

in  the  honorable  service  of  his  state, he  is  doomed 
to  die  in  the  slough  of  despond,  penniless, 
friendless  and  accursed — and  all  because  he 
obeyed  his  master  too  well! 

"  History  is  now  about  to  repeat  itself.  Re- 
member the  fate  of  Babylonia, of  Assyria, of  Per- 
sia,of  Greece, of  Rome  and  of  Carthage.  As  long 
as  they  were  well  governed  by  honest  officials  they 
prospered,  but  after  the  Shylocks  had  bought  up 
their  legislators  and  had  grown  wealthy  off 
the  spoils  of  the  people,  they  all  withered  and 
died  in  their  own  wickedness,  while  the  hordes 
of  hardy  men  from  the  hills  and  the  frontiers 
formed  themselves  into  armies  and  overthrew 
them.  Their  ill-gotten  gains  were  scattered  to 
the  four  winds  of  the  earth, and  history  gives  us 
their  names  as  a  warning.  And  well  will  it  be, 
sir,  if  we  take  warning  from  the  present  breeze, 
which  but  now  indicates  the  rising  of  the  awful 
storm  of  death  and  destruction.  If  we  do  not, 
then  look  out  for  the  hardy  men  of  the  hills,  who 
are  even  now  practicing  with  their  weapons  in 
contemplation  of  coming  events.  Poor,  foolish 
Coxey  had  the  idea  in  a  modified  form,  but  the 
Tamerlane  of  the  hills  will  be  a  very  much 
more  determined  person,  one  who  will  not  only 
step  on  the  grass,  but  who  will  also  boot  the 
members  of  this  Government  out  of  their  offices 


l6o  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

and  loot  the  strong-boxes  of  the  Shylocks,  as 
his  predecessors  did  the  Greeks  and  the  Romans 
of  old.  Ah!  you  smile,  but  let  me  tell  you  mil- 
lionaires that,  unless  you  loose  your  hold  on  the 
throats  of  the  people,  my  words  will  return  to 
you,  when  it  is  too  late,  with  all  the  force  of  a 
prophecy  in  them.  Think  not,  ye  Shylocks, 
that  the  day  will  not  come  when  the  aggressive- 
ness of  an  outraged  people  will  dethrone  you 
from  the  high  seats  you  have  stolen  and  obtained 
by  bribery  and  corruption.  And  ma}'  God  have 
mercy  on  you,  when  it  comes. 

"The  political  parties  all  lead  to  the  Shylock's 
office.  They  all  get  the  money  from  the  money- 
lords  to  carry  on  the  campaign  with — and  the 
misers  always  obtain  a  good  interest  on  their 
money.  The  politicians  are  compelled  to  serve 
their  masters,  because  their  living  depends  upon 
it.  Personally,  these  politicians  had  rather  serve 
the  people,  if  the  pay  was  as  good,  so  we  must 
make  it  our  business  to  see  that  those  who  stand 
up  for  our  rights  are  paid  for  it,  and  that  those 
who  have  sold  out  their  constituents  are  pun- 
ished. All  men  serve  a  good  paymaster,  and 
as  long  as  the  Shylocks  pay  the  politicians,  just 
so  long  will  they  dictate  our  laws  and  rob  us  by 
rote.  Just  so  long  will  we  find  it  impossible  to 
change  our  present  iniquitous  banking  laws  and 


THE   MODERN    BANKER  l6l 

stop  the  immense  interest  now  going  to  the 
banker,  made  by  the  money  of  the  depositors, 
none  of  which  goes  into  the  pocket  of  its  owner. 
"To  illustrate,  let  us  take,  for  example,  the 
National  Bank  of  Commerce,  of  Kansas  City, 
which  has  a  capial  of  $1,000,000,  with  a  sur- 
plus of  $200,000  and  deposits  amounting  to  $4,- 
500,000,  giving  its  officers  absolute  control  of 
$5,700,000  in  cash,  all  the  time.  Of  this  they 
loan  about  $4,250,000  at  an  average  rate  of — 
well,  say  eight  per  cent,  but  those  who  borrow 
it  will  swear  that  it  averages  twice  that  rate — or 
more.  This  gives  this  bank  $340,000  income 
per  annum.  Let  us  then  assume  that  the  legit- 
imate expenses,  not  including  salaries  of  offi- 
cers, are  $40,000  per  annum..  This  leaves  us 
$300,000,  as  interest  on  capital  and  official 
wages.  $1,200,000  at  eight  per  cent  makes 
$96,ooo,which  gives  an  ample  interest  on  all  the 
capital  invested  in  this  bank,  which,  taken  from 
the  $300,000,  leaves  us  the  enormous  amount  of 
$204,000  clean,  clear  cash  which  these  half- 
dozen  men  are  receiving  every  year,  as  official 
wages  from  this  bank.  I  cannot  help  wondering 
how  the}'  divide  it  up.  Let  us  see;  there  is  Dr. 
W.S. Woods, who  is  president.  He  owns  a  con- 
trolling interest  in  the  bank,  that  is  evident,  and 
as  we  know  he  is  a  greedy  cuss,  we  will  give 


1 62  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

him,  say  half  of  it,  or  an  annual  salary  of  $100,- 
ooo,  or  just  twice  as  much  as  this  United  States 
is  paying  the  President.  W. A. Rule  is  cashier. 
He  is  a  mighty  handy  little  man,  and  although 
he  does  not  own  a  great  deal  of  stock,  still  we 
feel  that  he  ought  to  be  paid  as  much  as  the 
United  States  is  paying  its  Secretary  of  the 
Treasurj7,  which  is  $8,000  per  annum.  To  the 
first  and  second  vice-presidents  we  will  pay 
the  same,  $8,000  per  annum  each.  This  will 
enable  us  to  pay  to  the  other  twelve  directors 
exactly  the  same  wages  that  the  United  States 
is  paying  to  its  Congressmen,  and  after  paying 
all  of  these  munificent  salaries,  we  will  have 
plenty  of  money  left  to  pa}'  a  large  assessment 
from  the  lobby  at  Washington  'and  for  other 
purposes.' 

"My  God,  gentlemen!  does  this  seem  like 
hard-times  wages?  Would  you  have  me  believe 
that  times  are  hard  when  such  ordinary, average 
men  as  these  gentlemen  are,  can  make  such 
wages  as  these  are?  No,  sirs,  the  times  are 

o  '  * 

flourishing  in  the  National  Bank  of  Commerce 
at  Kansas  City.  They  are  in  clover,  They  are 
dressing  in  fine  linen  and  living  off  the  fat  of 
the  land,  these  gentlemen  bankers  are.  They 
toil  not,  neither  do  they  spin,  but  the  world  is 
theirs  and  they  have  a  down-hill  pull  on  it,  at 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  163 

that.  But  this  is  not  all.  There  are  thousands 
of  other  similar  institutions  in  this  country  and 
they  are  all  faring  sumptuously.  This  illustra- 
tion fits  them  all,  except  in  details.  They  do  not 
know  that  we  are  having  hard  times  in  this 
country.  If  you  will  go  with  them  to  their  man- 
sions you  will  find  that  their  wives  and  daughters 
are  the  proud  peeresses  of  our  land.  They  spend 
their  days  trying  to  invent  some  new, ingenious 
and  untried  way  to  spend  their  surplus  wealth. 
They  eat  their  meals  off  solid  silver  and  dec- 
orate themselves  with  solid  gold.  Well  trained 
servants  glide  over  their  marble  halls,  ready  to 
do  the  bidding  of  the  masters  who  pay  them  a 
pittance  for  it.  And  I  ask  you,  gentlemen,  to 
remember  that  this  is  the  case  in  those  pampered 
homes  in  this  year  of  our  Lord,  1896,  when  the 
farmer's  corn  is  only  worth  15  cents  per  bushel. 
This  is  the  way  our  bankers  and  money-lords 
are  living,  while  the  poor  old  farmer  is  trying 
to  sell  a  good  horse  for  $10  to  pay  his  taxes  with, 
and  can  scarcely  find  a  purchaser  at  that  price. 
Gentlemen,  this  is  the  condition  of  our  Shy- 
locks,  while  millions  of  our  populace  are  tramp- 
ing the  sidewalks  of  our  cities  begging  for  work 
at  any  price, and  tens  of  thousands  of  honest  men 
are  trudging  over  our  muddy  highways,  beg- 
ging for  bread.  Thus  are  the  money-changers 


164  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

faring,  while  rhillions  of  our  defenseless  women 
and  children  are  huddled  together  in  the  hovels 
of  the  poor,  not  knowing  where  the  next  meal 
is  to  come  from. 

"But,  3'ou  say,  where  is  the  remedy  for  all  of 
these  evils?  I  will  tell  you  in  a  nutshell.  Listen: 
ist.  Give  us  absolute  Governmental  money,  free 
coinage  of  both  gold  and  silver  at  the  proper 
ratio,  whatever  that  may  be,  and  Government 
legal-tender  greenbacks,  in  sufficient  volume  to 
do  all  of  the  business  of  the  nation  and  of  the 
people  on  a  cash  basis.  Burn  every  bank-note 
in  existence  and  make  it  high  treason  for  any 
person  or  corporation  to  attempt  to  issue  any- 
thing in  the  shape  of  money, in  any  way.  Place 
heavy  penalties  on  all  persons  found  guilty  of 
attempting  to  increase  or  decrease  the  money  of 
this  nation  in  any  way,  and  fix  a  heavy  export 
duty  on  gold  and  silver  to  be  shipped  out  of  this 
country.  2nd.  Establish  banks  on  the  basis  of 
the  bill  I  have  presented  here,  thus  giving  each 
depositor  the  interest  on  his  own  money,  when 
loaned  out  by  the  bank,  and  also  placing  the 
banking  basis  on  the  solid  values  of  well  located 
real  estate  at  such  a  vast  per  cent  discount  of  its 
real  value  that  it  will  be  impossible  for  tricksters 
to  cause  loss  to  the  Government  or  to  depositors, 

"The  cause  of    all    the    trouble    has    been  in 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  165 

three  evils  which  can  be  easily  remedied:  ist. 
The  great  appreciation  of  primary  money,  gold. 
Remedy, both  gold  and  silver,as  absolute  money 
for  all  purposes.  2nd.  Our  present  system  of 
banking  was  made  by  the  money-lords  and  is 
being  run  in  their  interests  altogether,  and 
against  the  interests  of  the  masses.  Remedy, 
the  bill  I  have  presented  and  which  I  have 
heretofore  explained  fully.  3rd.  This  Govern- 
ment has  farmed  out  its  own  inalienable  rights 
to  make  and  maintain  the  money  of  its  people, 
a  medium  of  exchange  that  shall  be  unchange- 
able in  value  at  all  times,  to  a  set  of  men  who 
have  manipulated  the  money  of  this  country  in 
such  a  way  that  we  now  have  4,000  millionaires 
who  own  more  than  one-half  of  all  the  total 
values  of  all  kinds  in  this  country,  while  some 
65,000,000  of  our  people  are  now  on  the  verge 
of  bankruptcy,  ruin  and  starvation.  Remedy: 
Take  back  this,  the  most  sacred  power  of  our 
Government  and  let  the  United  States  make  and 
maintain  all  of  its  own  money,  both  coin  and 
paper,  and  throw  such  safeguards  around  it  as 
will  forever  destroy  the  power  of  our  oppressors. 
Sweep  the  national  banks  out  of  existence,  and 
thus,  at  one  fell  swoop,  destroy  the  most  power- 
ful monopoly  that  ever  existed  on  the  face  of 
the  earth.  Do  these  things,  gentlemen,  and  you 


I 66  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

have  solved  the  problem  of  our  prosperity  as  a 
nation  and  a  people.  Refuse,  and  you  will  have 
to  answer  for  it  ere  long,  when  the  hosts  of  the 
Commune,  the  hordes  of  Attilaand  the  bands  of 
the  Tamerlane  of  the  hills  have  swooped  down 
upon  you  and  have  drenched  your  fair  land  in 
blood  and  destruction.  Oh,  ye  pampered  aris- 
tocrats of  the  East,  ye  lenders  of  money  and  ye 
speculators  in  the  rights  of  the  masses,  listen 
now  to  the  notes  of  this  warning;  for  when  an 
outraged  people  once  finally  decide  that  they 
cannot  get  their  rights  by  peaceable  means, then 
will  the  worm  turn  on  you  with  the  cry  of 
Vengeance!  And  the  beast  of  burden  will  fall 
upon  you  and  destroy  you,  and  your  palaces 
shall  be  made  waste  places  and  your  millions 
shall  vanish  into  thin  airl" 


CHAPTER  XVI. 

THE  total  values  of  every  kind  of  property  in 
the  United  States,  that  is,  the  total  value  of  all 
property  of  every  kind  and  nature,  is  estimated 
at  $40,000,000,000  (forty  billion  dollars),  and 
now  we  have  about  4,000  men  who  own  about 
$25,000,000,000  (twenty-five  billion  dollars') 
worth  of  it.  Query:  How  long  will  it  take 
these  four  thousand  men  to  get  all  the  rest  of  the 
property  in  the  United  States? 

Let  us  figure  on  this  proposition  a  little.  Say 
they  get  four  per  cent  interest  on  their  money 
per  year,  then  we  find  that  twenty-five  billion 
dollars  will  bring  them  just  one  billion  dollars 
interest  at  four  per  cent;  so,  as  the  other  65,- 
000,000  people  of  this  country  now  only  own 
fifteen  billion  dollars'  worth  of  property  in  this 
country,  it  will  only  take  these  four  thousand 
men  fifteen  years  to  get  all  of  it,  to  say  nothing 
of  compound  interest. 

In  fifteen  years,  then,  four  thousand  men  will 
own  every  dollar's  worth  of  property  in  this 

United  States. 

167 


1 68  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

You  do  not  believe  that,  do  you? 

No,  kind  reader,  that  is  not  true;  but  here  is 
the  reason  of  its  apparent  falsity.  If  all  of  the 
workers  of  the  United  States  could  stop  work 
for  fifteen  years,  then  these  four  thousand  men 
would,  undoubtedly,  own  every  dollar's  worth 
of  property  in  the  United  States  within  the  term 
of  fifteen  years,  provided  they  could  collect  the 
interest  on  their  investments. 

But  these  four  thousand  men  have  about  65, 
000,000  slaves  at  work  for  them.  These  slaves 
ought  to  produce,  we  will  say,  a  profit  of  say 
$10  per  head  each  year.  This  means  $650,000,- 
ooo  per  annum  to  be  taken  out  of  the  billion 
dollars  our  masters  are  demanding  from  us  each 
year,  which  leaves  only  $350,000,000  per  annum 
which  will  have  to  be  taken  out  of  our  property 
to  pay  to  the  Shylocks, after  they  have  taken  all 
of  the  profits  of  all  of  our  labor. 

If  they  get  $350,000,000  worth  of  our  prop- 
erty every  year,  how  long  will  it  take  them  to 
get  all  of  the  rest  of  our  fifteen  billion  dollars' 
worth  still  left  to  us? 

About  forty-three  years. 

Is  that  all? 

Yes,  that  is  all.  They  will  own  every  dollar's 
worth  of  property  in  the  United  States  in  forty- 
three  years,  provided  values  rise  fast  enough  to 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  169 

pay  the  compound  interest;  if  not,  then  in  much 
less  time;  unless  we  have  a  change  in  our  pres- 
ent financial  policies. 

Yes, I  know  you  cannot  believe  this,  but  then, 
you  know,  u figures  cannot  lie." 

Prepare  your  necks  for  the  yoke,  for  the  bur- 
den is  falling  on  you;  nay,  it  is  already  firmly 
fastened  on  you  and  your  children. 

And  still  ye  are  Democrats!  Yaller-dog 
Democrats! 

Or  perhaps  ye  are  Republicans!  "Wah- 
hosses,"  eh? 

"Daddy  carried  his  pumpkins  to  the  house 
with  a  pumpkin  in  one  end  of  the  sack  and  a 
rock  in  the  other,  and  I  guess  he  knew  what  he 
was  doing." 

Certainly.  Your  father  was  a  very  wise  man, 
when  compared  with  the  son  he  has  raised.  No 
doubt  about  that. 


What  is  interest? 

It  is  the  penalty  we  have  to  pay  for  being 
poor. 

But  the  really  poor  cannot  borrow,  without 
security. 

No,  but  they  are  better  off  than  the  man  who 
is  just  rich  enough  to  be  able  to  borrow,  and 


THE    MODERN    BANKER 


poor  enough  to  be  forced  to  do  so;  for  interest 
is  but  the  knife  of  the  cold-blooded  Shylock, 
with  which  he  cuts  out  his  pound  of  flesh. 
There  is  no  poison  so  deadly  to  prosperity  as 
the  poison  of  interest.  It  withers  up  and  dies 
as  soon  as  the  Shylock's  knife  is  laid  at  its 
roots.  Debt  is  the  death-dealing  quagmire  that 
has  sunk  millions  in  the  slough  of  despond,  after 
the  Shylock's  knife,  interest,  has  cut  away  all 
of  the  arteries  of  life.  Friends,  flee  from  debt, 
as  you  would  from  the  demon  of  destruction.  It 
is  the  only  way  you  can  beat  the  Shylocks. 

We  are  a  nation  of  borrowers. 

Our  law-makers  have  made  us  such. 

Every  law  that  has  been  passed  within  the 
last  twenty  years,  touching  finance,  has  been 
dictated  by  the  bankers  and  money-lords. 

They  demonetized  silver. 

They  planned  the  present  system  of  banking. 

They  are  demanding  bonds  —  and  they  are 
getting  them. 

They  have  a  patent-right  on  legislation  of  this 
kind. 

They  own  the  Democratic  party. 

They  own  the  Republican  party. 

They  own  the  executive. 

They  own  Congress. 

Friends,  think  you  they  will  deliver  up  all  of 


THE   MODERN    BANKER  17! 

these  goods  and  chattels  without  a  fight?     No, 
never. 

Then  let  us  fight  them. 

Ah,  there's  the  rub.     Will  we  do  it? 

We  must,  or  else  be  slaves. 


What  is  $1,000? 

The  price  of  two  able-bodied  men. 

How  so? 

It  will  make  as  much  deaf  profit  as  they  can. 
It  is  even  better  than  the  men,  for  it  will  not 
wear  out  and  it  never  gets  sick.  It  works  every 
hour,  wet  or  shine. 

What  has  caused  this  to  be  so? 

The  great  appreciation  of  our  money,  which 
has  been  manipulated  by  the  money  sharks, 
while  honest  men  were  at  work.  We  have  been 
robbed  while  asleep. 

How  was  this  done? 

By  demonetizing  silver  and  cornering  gold. 
By  having  the  Government  call  in  all  of  its  own 
money  and  getting  the  right  to  substitute  bank- 
notes for  it. 


What  is  money? 

Gold  and  silver  coins  and  legal-tender  green- 
backs.    It    is    simply   a   medium  of  exchange, 


172  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

manufactured    by  the  Government,  to  expedite 
exchanges  of  values  among  its  people. 

What  are  bank-notes? 

They  are  substitutes  for  money.  They  are 
notes  given  by  banks,  which  agree  to  pay  you  the 
money  for  them  on  demand.  The  banks  give 
the  government  security  that  they  will  pay  them 
promptly,  when  presented,  and  then  loan  them 
out  to  the  people,  at  big  interest. 

Are  bank-notes  as  good  as  legal-tender  green- 
backs? 

Certainly  not.  When  a  bank  issues  its  notes 
it  is  going  in  debt  for  every  dollar  it  issues.  Say 
it  has  $50,000  capital  and  issues  $45,000  worth 
of  these  notes,  as  is  the  case  under  our  present 
law,  you  see  it  only  leaves  a  margin  of  $5,000 
above  its  debts, in  case  it  should  get  into  trouble. 
Would  you  not  rather  have  the  real  money,  is- 
sued directly  from  the  Government,  which  is 
made  a  legal-tender  for  all  debts,  dues  and  de- 
mands in  the  United  States,  both  public  and 
private,  than  to  accept  the  notes  of  a  concern 
that  owes  within  ten  per  cent  of  all  that  it  is 
worth  ?  Of  course  you  would. 

But  the  government's  bonds  are  behind  these 
bank-notes.  Does  that  not  make  them  good? 

Certainly.  But  why  is  it  necessary  to  have 
the  bank-note  at  all.  If  the  Government  must 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  173 

secure  the  issue  of  the  bank-notes,  by  selling 
the  banker  its  bonds,  and  then  pay  him  four  per 
cent  interest  on  the  bonds,  beside  allowing  him 
to  loan  the  bank-notes  out  to  the  people  at  in- 
terest, why  not  have  the  Government  issue  the 
non-interest-bearing  legal-tender  notes  itself, 
thus  saving  all  interest  and  extra  trouble? 

Oh,  you  love  the  banker,  do  you?  You  want 
to  force  the  Government  to  pay  him  interest  and 
give  him  a  nice  soft  snap  all  free  of  charge  to 
him,  do  you? 

Did  you  ever  borrow  money  from  a  banker 
and  find  out  just  how  much  he  loves  you?  Did 
you?  Did  he  offer  to  pay  you  interest  if  you 
would  agree  to  carry  his  notes  for  him?  Ah, 
no.  He  demanded  interest  from  you  for  the 
loan  of  his  own  promises  to  pay  you  the  money 
on  demand,  now,  didn't  he?  Yes,  sir;  he  wanted 
you  to  pay  him  interest  on  his  own  debts,  on  his 
own  notes,  before  he  would  let  you  have  them. 
And  then, about  the  security;  did  you  ever  have 
a  banker  stand  up  and  tell  you  that  your  own 
credit  was  not  worth  a  cent  and  that  you  must 
give  him  gilt-edged  security  before  he  would 
loan  you  some  of  his  own  debt-bank-notes?  The 
very  proposition  is  an  insult  to  our  American 
manhood  and  Government,  which  declares  that 
all  men  are  equal,  and  yet,  here  we  have  one 


174  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

rnan  stand  up  and  proclaim  his  own  greatness 
and  financial  glory, while  he  is  humbling  that  of 
his  neighbor  in  the  dust,  by  his  demands  for  se- 
curity. And  yet  our  Government  is  actually  pay- 
ing this  man  four  per  cent  interest  to  do  this. 
It  has  given  him  a  monopoly  of  our  money  and 
forces  us  to  bow  down  our  heads  and  beg  for 
favors. 

And  all  this  makes  you  love  the  banker,  does 
it? 

Ah,  surely  you  are  with  me  on  this  proposi- 
tion, my  friends.  You  have  never  thought  of  it 
before,  but  now,  since  I  have  called  your  atten- 
tion to  it,  I  know  that  you  will  join  me  in  this 
matter. 

We  must  wipe  these  national  banks  from  off 
the  face  of  the  earth.  They  are  a  menace  to 
our  very  existence.  They  have  all  joined  hands 
and  now  form  the  greatest  monopoly  on  earth. 
By  concerted  action,  they  have  demonetized 
silver,  thus  destroying  one-half  of  our  money  at 
one  fell  swoop,  and  doubling  the  value  of  every 
dollar  and  debt  that  was  due  to  them.  They 
have  cornered  the  gold  and  are  now  clamoring 
for  the  withdrawal  of  the  greenbacks,  because 
they  cannot  control  and  corner  them,  and  now, 
every  few  months,  we  see  them  bleeding  our 
Government  for  hundreds  of  millions  of  dollars' 


THE   MODERN    BANKER  175 

worth  of  bonds,  under  the  efficient  management 
of  Mr.  Cleveland  and  his  cohorts.  No  stage 
robber  ever  held  up  a  stage  and  demanded  the 
money  of  the  passengers  more  deliberately  than 
the  Shylocks  are  holding  up  our  government  and 
robbing  it  during  these  troublous  times. 

And    still   you   love    the    banker,    do    you? 
Surely  not. 


What  is  a  banker? 

These  are  a  set  of  men  to  whom  the  govern- 
ment of  the  United  States  pays  four  per  cent  in- 
terest and  gives  them  a  monopoly  of  handling 
its  money,  and  the  money  of  the  people, because 
the  people  love  them  so  well. 
^  But  do  they  not  pay  the  Government  some- 
thing for  all  of  these  great  and  special  favors? 

No,  nothing  except  a  very  small  tax,  about 
the  same  as  other  people  pay. 

What  is  their  business? 

They  are  schemers  and  monopolists.  They 
spend  their  time  scheming  out  some  new  method 
of  robbing  the  people  who  love  them  so  well. 
They  have  combined  and  now  have  a  complete 
monopoly  of  all  of  the  money  of  this  country, 
which  they  are  now  using  to  bleed  this  Govern- 
ment,by  forcing  it  to  issue  hundreds  of  millions 


176  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

of  dollars'  worth  of  interest-bearing  bonds,  which 
they  expect  to  use  in  forcing  this  nation  to  per- 
petuate their  own  existence,  as  the  only  purvey- 
ors of  our  money. 

Why  do  the  people  love  these  bankers  so 
well?  . 

Because  they  are  bankers  and  are  rich  and 
smart.  The  people  of  this  country  think  so 
much  of  them  that  they  are  now  depositing  all 
of  their  money  in  their  banks,  all  the  time,  free 
of  charge,  and  are  then  borrowing  this  money 
back  from  the  bankers  and  paying  them  the 
munificent  sum  of  $360,000,000  per  annum  as 
interest  on  it.  Not  only  that,  but  the  people  are 
insisting  that  the  Government  shall  pay  these 
bankers  four  per  cent  interest,  per  annum,  on 
all  of  their  capital,  as  interest  on  the  bonds 
which  the  Government  issues  to  secure  their 
bank-notes  with.  Yes,  and  more  than  this,  this 
Government  is  now  giving  these  bankers  an  ab- 
solute monopoly  on  handling  all  the  money  used 
in  this  country,  absolutely  free,  when  this  privi- 
lege would  bring  hundreds  of  millions  of  dollars, 
if  offered  to  the  highest  bidder,  as  other  Govern- 
mental contracts  are  let. 

The  bankers  are  the  special  favorites  of  the 
Government  and  the  people  of  this  United  States. 
They  have  a  very  nice,  soft  snap  and  they  are 
using  it  for  all  it  is  worth,  while  it  lasts. 


THE    MODERN    BANKER  177 

Is  there  no  way  to  stop  them  from  committing 
all  of  these  outrages  on  the  people? 

Certainly.  The  people  could  vote  them  out 
of  existence  in  two  years'  time,  if  they  wanted 
to  do  so. 

Why  do  they  not  do  so? 

Because  they  love  the  bankers  so  well.  This 
is  the  only  reason  why  they  do  not  do  so,  that  I 
can  see. 

Friends,  I  do  not  love  the  bankers  so  well, 
do  you?  If  not,  then  we  must  get  together  and 
vote  them  out  of  existence.  Will  you  help  me? 
Ah,  that's  the  question. 

You  must  decide  it  for  yourselves.  God  help 
you. 

My  story  is  told.  Henry  and  Cora  are  still 
in  New  York,  living  in  splendid  misery.  With 
all  of  their  millions  I  extend  to  them  my  sympa- 
thies. They  were  not  naturally  bad.  The  busi- 
ness of  their  lives  may  have  warped  their 
dispositions.  I  believe  it  did.  At  all  events, 
I  am  sorry  for  them.  Their  children  are  beauti- 
ful to  look  at,  but  under  the  circumstances  sur- 
rounding them,  we  cannot  expect  them  to  be 
other  than  vain,  frivolous  and  empty-hearted. 
Let  us  hope  that  they  will  not  turn  out  to  be 
vicious,  from  the  same  causes. 


178  THE    MODERN    BANKER 

Colonel  Hunt  and  his  family  are  now  in 
Washington,  where  he  is  still  championing  the 
great  bill  that  he  introduced,  which  has  been 
fully  explained  heretofore.  I  do  not  know  a 
happier  family.  The  sweet  bonds  of  sympathy 
and  pure  love  bind  them  together  with  bonds 
that  nothing  but  death  can  sever.  The  children, 
living  in  this  heaven  on  earth,  being  reared  by 
such  a  mother  and  father,  are  like  the  brightest 
and  most  beautiful  blossoms  on  the  Tree  of 
Promise;  and  in  after  life  will  take  their  places 
in  the  world  as  worth}'  representatives  of  their 
parents. 

The  old  grandparents  are  all  still  alive,  happy 
and  contented.  They  have  thousands  of  bushels 
of  this  Democratic  corn  at  15  cents  a  bushel, 
plenty  of  three-cent  pork  and  two-cent  beef,and 
other  edibles  in  abundance,  and  while  they  are 
not  selling  anything  at  present  prices,  they  are 
living  in  the  hope  that  Colonel  Hunt  may  get 
his  great  bill  passed  and  made  into  a  law;  when 
they  confidently  expect  much  better  prices. 

Mr.  Lyman  is  still  at  the  head  of  the  lobby 
at  Washington,  which  he  reports  as  being  in  a 
very  thriving  condition,  on  account  of  the  unu- 
sual activity  that  it  has  influenced  Mr.  Cleveland 
to  make  in  the  interests  of  the  banks,  in  issuing 
the  bonds  so  promptly  when  called  upon.  He 


THE   MODERN    BANKER  179 

is  still  fighting  those  legal-tender  greenbacks, 
and  says  that  he  considers  his  efforts  to  have 
them  withdrawn  from  circulation,  as  the  only 
failure  he  has  made  in  a  long  and  eventful  life. 
Still  he  does  not  despair  of  success  yet.  He  and 
Mr.Cleveland  stand  very  close  together  and  are 
firm  friends.  In  fact,  I  might  say,  I  believe  that 
he  is  acting  as  the  President's  Privy  Counselor 
on  Finance  at  this  time.  At  all  events,  Mr. 
Lyman  declares  that  Cleveland  is  the  greatest 
statesman  who  has  ever  filled  the  White  House, 
and  all  of  the  bankers,  Shylocks  and  money- 
lords  are  echoing  the  sentiment  in  enthusiastic 
tones.  There  is  one  point  that  is  a  certainty — 
Wall  Street  stands  up  firmly  and  forever  for  the 
firm  of  Lyman  and  Cleveland.  And  so  do 
England  and  the  Shylocks  of  Europe. 

"You  Shelbina!  You  better  keep  outen  dem 
jelly  and  cakes,  er  I'll  tell  Miss  Mamie  on  yer. 
Dey  weren't  made  fer  sich  niggers  as  you  is  ter 
ete.  Deys  made  fur  de  white  fokes,  and — " 

"Now,  Pompey,  you  wouldn't  tell  on  me, 
now  wud  yer?" 

"Git  erway  from  here  gal,  git  erway,  I  tell 
yer!  I  ain't  none  uv  yer  hired  servants,  what 
yer  kin  buy  off  wid  er  smile  an'  er  nudge.  I'se 
one  uv  de  family,  I  is,  an'  I  don't  'pose  to  have 


TilB  MODERN 


yer  wastin'  de  vittels  dat  way.     I'se  one  uv  de 
family,  I  tell  yer.     Git  erway!" 

And    Pompey    was    the   happiest   darky   in 
Washington. 


THE   END. 


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